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TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Thursday! Ecommerce is shifting fast while regulators, platforms and logistics players redraw the map. New York just forced apps to admit when your data sets the price. Airbnb turns hosts into mini-fulfilment hubs. In Europe delivery giants hunt profit as lockers, EV fleets and mobile stores reshape the last mile.
Maze Focus🌀
🧠 Your Data Sets the Price
🛒 Airbnb Enters Groceries
📊 Digital Growth Has a Ceiling
🌍 South Beats East After 2025
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Last week handpicked news you need to know
🍔 Delivery & eGrocery briefing
🚚 Ecommerce Logistics briefing
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
🌀 MAZE STORY
The Maze: Airbnb is testing a grocery add-on with Instacart that lets guests stock the kitchen before they arrive. Hosts receive and shelve the order, earning a bonus for each delivery. A stay becomes a fulfilment event and Airbnb steps deeper into services that live around the trip.
From January 2026 guests in selected US cities can order groceries up to three weeks before check-in.
Hosts earn 25 dollars per order and a 100 dollar first-order bonus for handling delivery.
This pilot sits inside Airbnb’s Services push, which leadership says could add around one billion dollars in annual revenue.
Why it matters: Travel is merging with retail. If guests expect the fridge ready on arrival, ecommerce moves from home convenience to trip infrastructure. Platforms that bundle logistics with hospitality shape the next wave of travel spend.
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🌀 MAZE STORY
The Maze: New York now forces apps to say when algorithms use your personal data to set prices, turning hidden math into a public label. Uber Eats and DoorDash added warnings within days, showing how deep personalised pricing already runs. A quiet back-end practice is suddenly a front-stage disclosure.
On 10 November 2025 companies must flag any price shaped by location, order history or device data.
DoorDash and Uber Eats added checkout notices explaining how they use past orders, addresses and preferences.
A court defeat in October 2025 means penalties of up to one thousand dollars per violation now apply.
Why it matters: Price transparency hits the heart of ecommerce. The same data trains used for convenience can shape what each person pays. Platforms that explain their pricing survive; the ones hiding behind algorithms will struggle as rules tighten.
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💎 DATA TREASURE
The Maze: The US ecommerce average looks low because the biggest retail categories barely shop online. Books, electronics and hobbies live in the future; food and auto live in the past. The spread shows where the next trillion dollars will move.
In 2025 books and media push around 70 percent online while groceries sit near 8 percent and auto parts near 6 percent.
Online grocery hits roughly 220 billion dollars with Walmart leading and Amazon expanding same-day reach.
Auto parts grow fast online while car buying and servicing stay offline, holding penetration down.
Why it matters: Future growth sits in slow-to-digitise giants. Even small online shifts in food and auto unlock billions. The retailers that fix margins, logistics and trust win the next decade.
💎 DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Eastern Europe slowed just as Southern Europe shifted into a higher gear. One region surged during the pandemic, the other catches up after 2025. Same population size, different digital trajectory.
Eastern Europe doubled ecommerce revenue from 2020 to 2024 before settling into mid-single-digit growth.
Southern Europe accelerates toward about 9 percent annual growth through 2029 with higher spend per shopper.
Marketplaces like eMAG and Ozon drive the East while El Corte Inglés, Skroutz and Trendyol fuel the South.
Why it matters: Europe’s next ecommerce lift sits below the usual radar. Southern Europe combines scale, better infrastructure and rising digital confidence. Investors and brands that move first collect the compounding gains.
📰 Briefing
🍔 Last week in Delivery & eGrocery
🇩🇪 Delivery Hero grows GMV and chases profit. Q3 2025 GMV rises to about €12.2B while revenue grows faster than orders and quick commerce turns EBITDA positive as AI and cost cuts push group profit higher.
🇭🇺 Lidl puts a supermarket on a bus. A refitted minibus carries around 80 core products into remote Hungarian villages for a three week trial, testing if mobile discount retail can replace dying local shops and win new loyal customers.
🇮🇱 Wolt wants to be your local mall. Wolt now pushes supermarkets, pharmacies and electronics beside restaurants and says non food already drives about one fifth of sales as it builds a same day local commerce layer across nearly 30 countries.
🇺🇸 DoorDash hit by another user data breach. An October 2025 attack exposed customer and courier contact details via a phished employee account and revived questions over how a platform with tens of millions of users manages security risk.
🇦🇺 Just Eat shuts Menulog in Australia. Menulog closes on 26 November 2025, about 120 staff lose their jobs and restaurants and riders must shift to Uber Eats or DoorDash as Just Eat refocuses on stronger European markets.
🇬🇧 Superdrug joins Just Eat for fast delivery. An exclusive deal lists 8,000 health and beauty items from 29 pilot stores with delivery in as little as 30 minutes, turning a food app into a new last minute channel for makeup, meds and toiletries.
📰 Briefing
🚚Last week in Ecommerce Logistics
🇩🇪 DHL profit up on lower revenue. Q3 2025 EBIT climbs to roughly €1.5B even as sales edge down as DHL leans on pricing, efficiency and AI tools to protect margins in a weaker global trade environment.
🇮🇳 DHL bets big on India. The group plans about €1B of investment by 2030 into logistics parks, ecom hubs, EV sites and a new tech centre in Indore, turning India into a key node for manufacturing, pharma and green supply chains.
🇮🇳 Flipkart EV fleet hits 20k. Flipkart now runs more than 20,000 electric vehicles, targets a fully electric last mile by 2030 and pilots long haul e trucks, forcing India’s delivery market to follow on clean transport.
🇬🇧 InPost lockers enter Post Offices. A six month UK trial puts parcel lockers outside selected Post Office branches to offer 24/7 pickup and drop off while giving InPost prime high street sites and new rural reach.
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