AI’s Place In The $50B RV Market

Consumers are beginning to express more preferences regarding their buying and selling experiences on online marketplaces, which are seeing an increased amount of competition in the market as they attempt to hold onto their customer bases. This competition can grow especially fierce as the demographics of online shopping continue to shift: Generation Z is influencing the eCommerce world quickly, and will represent approximately 40 percent of such shoppers by 2020. Gen Z consumers come with their own unique payment and shopping needs — and little patience to wait and see if one platform can fulfill them.

In the latest Payments And The Platform Economy Playbook, PYMNTS takes a closer look at how buyer payments and seller payouts are changing as the sharing economy grows.

What’s New In The Platform Economy

Major eCommerce player Amazon is among the companies stepping up their investment in this area, announcing several moves designed to give it a firmer foothold in international markets, such as Japan. The company has partnered with instant credit provider Paidy to give Japanese consumers another way to pay on its online marketplace, and has made adjustments to its mobile wallet and payment options in India.

Technology and social media company Facebook is also growing more involved in the sharing economy. The company has added in-app payments for several of its online applications, including Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Consumers must simply go to their phones’ settings to enable these payments, which aim to keep customers invested in the app experience, even when buying from outside vendors.

Some marketplaces are finding innovation in this space easier than others. Peer-to-peer shopping platform Etsy is still fielding comments and concerns from frustrated sellers following a previous change to its site algorithms that prioritized items offering free shipping. The move has led to a major shift in the way items are sold and processed on the platform, but sellers still have a few qualms regarding these changes.

To learn more about these and other stories, visit the Playbook’s News & Trends section.

Outdoorsy Discusses How Buyer, Seller Payments Are Changing The Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is growing larger and more varied, but so is consumer opinion on these marketplaces. Both buyers and sellers of shared goods or services now view the sharing experience as relatively mundane, which means that participating marketplaces need to change the ways they are approaching the customer experience on both sides of their platforms to better keep them invested. That means taking a closer look at buyer and seller payments, as well as security measures, on the platforms, said Colin Gardiner, chief revenue officer of shared RV marketplace Outdoorsy.

To learn more about the challenges of consumer trust and changing payment preferences, visit the Playbook’s feature story.

Why Travel Firms Need To Cater To Millennial Payment Preferences

Millennials have a different take on travel than previous generations. This consumer group takes more trips than other generations, but takes longer to plan those trips as well. They overspend on vacations, but take very seriously the finding of deals and discounts to help with travel arrangements. The fight to become the travel marketplace that wins millennial business is only mounting as millennials become a larger portion of the consumers who travel the world and seek new experiences.

To learn more about how millennial payment and booking preferences are changing the travel and sharing economies, visit the Playbook’s Case Study.

About The Playbook

The monthly Payments And The Platform Economy Playbook, a PYMNTS and Yapstone collaboration, aims to help platform payment decision-makers identify and manage the risks and rewards inherent in optimizing their operations and navigating real-time challenges.