Table of Contents:
Welcome to the Moast newsletter. We spend the week collecting news, trends, and other content that we think would be interesting to e-commerce founders and CMOs. Our goal is to provide value without sounding like a promo for our app. Helpful wether you use Moast or not.
Gen Z has found a new asset class, and it's parlays. A Betterment survey found 66% of Gen Z investors bet on sports, 52% have redirected money earmarked for investing into wagers, and 26% treat betting as part of their long-term financial strategy. Bank of America found Gen Z is twice as likely as anyone else to call it investing. Worth knowing where your younger customers' discretionary dollars are actually going this quarter.
Here's what caught our attention in the world of e-commerce this week 👇
1/ DTC Headlines
AI chatbots are sending shoppers to Walmart and Costco, not Amazon
-> UBS tested how ChatGPT and Claude handle shopping queries and found a consistent preference for brick-and-mortar chains.
-> Amazon has dominated online retail for decades and the models skip right past it.
-> UBS calls AI recommendation engines the next competitive battleground. Visibility is the new shelf space.
BARK and Crocs made a dog bed you can put charms on
-> The Crocs Snore Mode bed is an oversized Classic Clog with Jibbitz-inspired slots for swappable plush charms.
-> The collection adds collars, leashes, poop bag holders and matching human Crocs in four colorways.
-> BARK's VP of brand: "It's not a novelty purchase, it's an identity purchase." The first Pet Crocs sold out repeatedly.
Prime Big Deal Days drove $9.86 billion
-> Up 8.5% year over year across all US retailers, with discounts peaking at 20% off list.
-> Mobile was 52% of spending at $5.1B, up 12.8%.
-> Adobe's standout stat: influencers converted shoppers 11 times better than social networks overall.
Walmart launched one-hour curbside pickup for the holidays
-> Express Pickup is live at 500 stores and going nationwide in the coming weeks, free and unlimited for Walmart+ members.
-> It joins drone delivery, 30-minute delivery and three-hour on-demand in the fulfillment stack.
-> Walmart also added in-store ASL interpreting through Sorenson, via a QR code at the service desk.
What Walmart added for the season →
TikTok is putting an AI assistant and one-click checkout in the feed
-> Shopping Assistant is a conversational agent that remembers context and answers questions on sizing, shipping and availability.
-> Buy Direct lets shoppers purchase from a brand in one click without leaving the For You feed.
-> Built with Shopify, Stripe, Salesforce and Shoplazza. 54 million Americans have bought something after seeing a TikTok video.
Inside TikTok's agentic push →
Shoppers used Prime Day to stock up, not to gift
-> Average order was $48.74, and 54% of participating households placed at least two orders.
-> Household spending averaged $114.01, below the $121.96 from June's Prime Day.
-> Most of it went to everyday essentials. October's event is becoming a fall sales moment, not a holiday kickoff.
What shoppers actually bought →
Virtual try-on launched inside ChatGPT
-> Shoppers upload or take a selfie and see how clothing and accessories look on them before buying.
-> It happens in the chat, before anyone reaches your product page.
-> Your product imagery is now doing the fitting room work on a surface you don't control.
2/ Shopify
Grok can now run your Shopify store
-> Connect the Shopify connector and ask Grok to check orders, track inventory and keep listings up to date.
-> It covers products, collections, inventory, orders, customers, discounts and analytics, scoped to the permissions you grant.
-> Musk announced it October 8. That's Claude, Muse, Perplexity, ChatGPT and now Grok with a door into the admin.
Carts now follow shoppers across devices through Shop
-> Shop can recognize a shopper while they browse, before they ever buy.
-> Carts sync both ways between your store and the Shop app, plus one-tap sign-in and a Shop Pay button pre-filled with their last card.
-> Browsing activity syncs too, so Shop resurfaces viewed items and abandoned carts. On by default for Shop users.
3/ What We Found Interesting
Shoppers are buying used because new clothes got worse
-> US secondhand sales grew nearly four times faster than new clothing last year, per ThredUp, and used now takes about a third of clothing budgets.
-> Synthetics hit 69% of global fiber production in 2024, and shoppers are reading labels and noticing.
-> 60% of consumers now factor resale value into buying new. Durability is becoming a purchase driver.
The NY Fed put a number on tariff inflation: 2.9 points
-> Across 67 categories of consumer goods, tariffs added 2.9 percentage points to prices through February.
-> Without them, that basket would have gotten about 1% cheaper. Nearly 90% of 2025 tariffs passed through to import prices.
-> Roughly a quarter of any tariff increase reaches consumer prices within a year, and the effect lingers after the tariff lifts.
4/ What We Found Helpful
84% of ChatGPT buying decisions come from the product card
-> Researchers recorded 40 US shoppers across 224 tasks. Product cards were the first thing engaged 75% of the time.
-> 43% of picks went to the first card, and 76% of seller picks went to the first offer shown.
-> Shoppers cited specs, price and brand in 82% of tasks. Reviews, just 2%. Your image, title and price are the pitch.
The video commerce statistics worth knowing
-> Our new roundup pulls the numbers on how video affects conversion, engagement and returns.
-> Useful for building a case internally, or sanity-checking where to put your Q4 effort.
-> Every stat sourced, so you can cite them without digging.
Related content
Turn your social content into a revenue channel
Turn your TikToks and Reels into shoppable videos and boost conversions by 3.5x.
.jpg)
