TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Sunday! The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and major retailers are extending fulfillment deadlines all the way to Christmas Eve. Companies like Amazon, Target, and Walmart are leveraging their physical store networks to make last-minute logistics the main competitive battleground for securing shopper loyalty.
Can the logistics infrastructure scale this kind of speed profitably without inflating operational costs dramatically for the rest of the year?
In today’s MarketMaze focus:
Retailers rush holiday delivery
Google localizes loyalty pricing
UK courier refund leakage
Ecommerce Price shield
Black Friday’s High Stakes Reality
+Handpicked recent news you need to know
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Amazon, Target, and Walmart are aggressively pushing holiday fulfillment deadlines to Christmas Eve, transforming last-minute logistics into the key competitive battleground to secure shopper loyalty this season. Retail leaders are now leveraging physical store footprints and cutting-edge tech trials to guarantee ultrafast delivery options right up until the final hours.
Target enables customers to secure two-hour fulfillment via curbside or in-store pickup, alongside same-day delivery for a $9.99 fee—or free for Circle360 members—by extending store hours until 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Amazon is testing ultra-quick delivery services in Seattle and Philadelphia, aiming to fulfill orders in 30 minutes or less as it expands beyond its standard delivery window.
Walmart recently set a record by fulfilling a Black Friday order in 10 minutes and is expanding its use of drone delivery services across Atlanta, demonstrating its focus on achieving profitable, immediate fulfillment.
Why it matters: This race forces operators to integrate physical and digital assets, using store locations and AI-powered logistics to efficiently manage urgent inventory flow and reduce fulfillment costs. Successful execution of these ultrafast capabilities increasingly defines shopper loyalty and sets a new bar for convenience that consumers will expect year-round, not just during the holidays.
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DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Europe spent five years wrestling with rising prices while online prices stayed calm. Ecommerce kept cost growth almost seven points below the wider economy, acting as a quiet shock absorber for households. The more people bought online, the more pressure it put on prices everywhere else. This is competition doing what monetary policy often cannot.
• Between 2020 and 2025 online prices rose to an index of 104 while headline inflation hit 111, widening a price gap that grew most during the 2022 energy spike.
• A one point rise in online shopper penetration cut inflation by up to 0.07 points and saved households about 880 euros a year.
• The effect was strongest in the tightest months of 2022 and 2023 as digital retailers repriced faster and forced offline rivals to follow.
Why it matters: The digital market did not just lower prices but also disciplined the entire retail field. More online demand meant more transparency, faster adjustments and tougher competition. Ecommerce becomes a stabilizer for economies facing supply shocks but only if the market stays open, competitive and fair.
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Google is launching a new Shopping ads beta that enables merchants to display region-specific loyalty prices by integrating localized promotional incentives directly into the retail media ecosystem. This feature allows retailers to tailor member discounts based on geography, simplifying ad management while potentially boosting loyalty program engagement and conversion rates.
Merchants must join Google’s loyalty add-on and configure regions within Merchant Center, specifying loyalty attributes like tier and price in their regional inventory feed.
When a shopper clicks an ad, Google appends a region ID parameter to the URL, enabling the retailer’s landing page to dynamically display the correct corresponding member price.
The current beta is limited to markets that support both RAAP (regional availability and pricing) and loyalty programs, making it critical for membership-based retailers to monitor its expansion, according to Search Engine Land.
Why it matters: This granular location targeting helps retailers optimize ad spend by focusing steeper discounts on competitive markets to improve ROAS and drive strategic loyalty sign-ups. This new capability enables growth and marketing teams to enhance customer relevance and gain a competitive edge by visibly communicating localized, exclusive member value.
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DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Shoppers came willing to buy and conversion jumped sharply, but the economics went the other way. Competition swelled, spend ballooned, and shrinking baskets erased much of the upside. Amazon then returned to the arena with full force while Temu pulled back, shaping who wins and who pays. The day delivered volume, not comfort.
Impressions rose 13 percent and conversion climbed 16 percent, yet spend jumped 31 percent as CPC increased nearly 24 percent, turning strong demand into expensive demand.
Orders grew 23 percent but average order value fell more than 6 percent despite inflation, pushing ROAS down 12 percent and pulling margins from mid thirties to about 27 percent by late November.
Amazon reached roughly 83 percent visibility among retailers by Black Friday, resetting price expectations and driving a tougher auction during the most costly week of the year.
Temu’s visibility slid to about 24 percent as tariffs and higher costs curbed its appetite for paid traffic, leaving mid tier retailers to fight a denser and more expensive field.
Why it matters: Black Friday still brings traffic but the price of winning rises every year. When giants shape auctions and shoppers chase discounts, smaller players feel the squeeze first. Ecommerce teams need discipline on budgets and clarity on profit or the biggest sales day becomes the least profitable one.
MAZE STORY
The Maze: UK retailers face a massive hidden cost, collectively losing an estimated £2.1 billion annually because they fail to claim eligible refunds for lost, late, or damaged packages from courier partners, quietly eroding operational margins across the sector.
Unclaimed courier refunds arise from the complexity of logistics and contract terms that often place the burden of proof squarely on the retailer, limiting their negotiation power and effective tracking.
Missing this revenue reduces cash flow and inflates logistics costs, especially compressing the margins of mid-size retailers who often lack the operating buffers to absorb these unrecouped expenses.
Why it matters: Logistics audit failures represent a crucial blind spot in operational finance; modern e-commerce teams must prioritize deploying automated refund technologies to recapture lost profits.
BRIEFING
🏬 Everything else in Ecommerce & key players
🇺🇸 Netflix announced its largest acquisition ever, buying Warner Bros.' studio and streaming assets for $72 billion, a deal set to massively reshape the media landscape and bring HBO and iconic franchises under its ownership.
🇺🇸 Amazon is doubling down on future investments across autonomous robotaxis (Zoox), expanding ultrafast fulfillment capabilities, and embedding AI 'teammates' into its internal operations, signaling its next wave of strategic priorities.
🇸🇪 Ikea plans to significantly increase product sourcing and production capacity in the United States, pursuing a major strategy to localize its supply chain closer to North American consumer markets and mitigate trade tariff risks.
🇫🇷 European DIY giant Leroy Merlin was hit by a cyberattack that compromised the personal data of several hundred thousand customers, though bank details and passwords were reportedly unaffected.
🇺🇸 SHEIN and Temu face mounting legal challenges and US congressional demands for investigations into alleged IP theft, forced labor, and data privacy concerns.
🌍 The global fashion industry faces a new reality defined by low growth, mandatory EU sustainability regulations (ESPR), and AI reshaping everything from product design to consumer behavior in 2026.
BRIEFING
📣Everything else in Ecommerce ecosystem
🌍 New forecasts indicate that influencer marketing is maturing, with brands shifting focus toward demanding measurable ROI, integrating paid media, and rigorous performance metrics across all creator partnerships in 2026.
🇺🇸 Payments giant Stripe acquired Metronome, a usage-based billing platform, signaling its aggressive move to become the essential payments infrastructure provider for sophisticated AI companies and their unique monetization models.
🌍 Google is testing an experimental AI feature in Search Console, allowing users to configure search results performance reports using natural language prompts, dramatically simplifying SEO data analysis and workflow.
🇺🇸 Meta is planning massive budget reductions and potential job cuts within its Reality Labs metaverse division, confirming the firm's strategic refocus away from expensive VR/AR toward core AI development.
🇺🇸 Walmart is expanding its drone delivery network in partnership with Wing Drone Delivery, bringing ultrafast fulfillment capability to customers across the competitive Atlanta metropolitan region.
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