New research from leading performance marketing agency Impression has revealed huge optimism amongst UK ecommerce retailers around revenue, team and budget growth – but ongoing reluctance to embrace AI.
Impression surveyed 700 UK and US marketing professionals working in the e-commerce industry, across a range of business sizes and sectors. The survey found that:
The UK holds much greater optimism than the US: 91% of UK respondents forecast revenue growth for their business over the next year (vs 71% in the US), despite a challenging economic landscape. Furthermore, 85% said they expected marketing budgets to increase (vs 59% in the US), while 84% plan to invest more into creative assets (vs 58% in the US) and 82% planned to grow their internal marketing team (vs 58% in the US).
Apathy towards AI: Despite their positive sentiment, UK e-commerce marketers, alongside their US counterparts, remain apathetic towards AI. When asked what they thought the keys to success would be over the next year, 76% of UK marketers said having a clear strategy would be most important, while 53% highlighted new non-AI tools and technology as a major requirement. At the same time, only 5% consider AI and automation as a key to success.
US marketers were only slightly more positive about AI, with 8% saying it would be key to success over the next twelve months.
The vast majority of both US and UK respondents also did not view AI as a threat. When asked about their biggest challenges for the coming year, 68% of UK marketers cited increased competition while 45% said they were worried about creating high quality content. By contrast, just 10% believed that AI and automation would be a challenge. In the US, this figure was again only slightly higher at 13%.
Liam Wade, performance director at Impression, said: “The confidence among the UK e-commerce marketers is hugely reassuring, especially given recent economic turbulence and subsequent pressure on marketing budgets.
“That being said, e-commerce businesses will need to think tactically about what technology they invest in and leverage, including AI. Google’s recent introduction of AI Mode, for example, has the potential to totally upend how brands are discovered online, and is no longer viable for e-commerce brands to be ignoring AI.”
