90% growth goes to marketplace models, the rest goes “empty.”
In this episode of Kassenzone, hosted by Karo and Alex, we take the audience on an exciting journey through the latest developments in the e-commerce sector. We are reflecting on the first events of 2026, which represent an important platform for us to gain valuable insights and interact with the community. Special mention is made of participation in the E-Commerce Expo in Berlin, where we were able to make numerous interesting contacts, as well as the top-class keynote from Alex, which aroused great interest.
A central topic of this episode is the Kassenzone meetup, which today deals with the TikTok shop. Alex gives us an insight into the questions he wants to ask the experts at this event, and we talk about how TikTok could be a functioning sales channel even for high-priced products. In addition to focusing on the community and sharing ideas in the meetups, we are also preparing for major events in the future such as OMR and Data Unplugged, where we will have the opportunity to have even more intensive discussions and gain valuable insights.
We'll then dive deep into the latest figures from the ECDB Global E-Commerce Compass 2026. We analyse how global e-commerce growth is going through a period of normalization in recent years. Growth forecasts point to stabilization at 7.8 percent for 2025 and an accelerated rate of 8.6 percent for 2026. We find that global e-commerce sales will exceed the 5 trillion US dollar mark, which underlines the sustainable relevance of online retail compared to analog retail.
How retailers remain competitive in the platform era through tech & AI
When almost all market growth flows to giants such as Amazon, Pinduoduo or TikTok Shop, technological advantage becomes a matter of survival for independent retailers and brands. As Karo and Alex aptly discuss in the following, the costs of customer acquisition are rising massively, while emerging developments such as Agentic Commerce place completely new demands on your own data and system landscape. Waiting is no longer an option here. In order to assert ourselves in this hypercompetitive environment, we at Etribes build highly scalable end-to-end ecosystems for our customers. Whether it's smart marketplace integrations, the implementation of modern customer data platforms (CDPs) or tailor-made custom implementations for complex business models — we consistently align the technology with the business strategy.
At the same time, we know that artificial intelligence should not be an end in itself. Instead of expensive experiments, we focus on AI Realization with measurable business impact. About formats such as our AI readiness assessment or targeted Value Sprints We identify exactly the use cases along the value chain that bring immediate efficiency gains and cost reductions. From clean data architecture as a foundation to intelligent business companions and autonomous agents: We support the AI transformation end-to-end so that the technological hype becomes a value-added lever that is permanently anchored in the business model.
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