Connected Commerce - just another buzzword? In this episode, it quickly becomes clear that it is about much more than a trend. Ingrid speaks with Janine Hummel and Daniel Zemitzsch from Front Row about why many brands still think in channels while customers have long moved on to journeys. Budgets and KPIs are typically channel-driven, whereas the customer journey jumps between TikTok, Amazon, D2C shops and AI agents. As long as the last touchpoint receives all the credit, teams will inevitably optimise against each other - not out of bad intent, but because the system is designed that way. The central question of the episode is therefore: Who actually takes responsibility for the overall interplay, rather than just a single channel? And how do you make budget and prioritisation decisions when data is never complete? An episode about Connected Commerce not as a tool debate, but as an organisational and leadership challenge.

If you want to know more, download the Front Row white paper "Connected Commerce" here: connected-commerce.com

Note from the sponsor bol:

If you’re planning to expand into the Netherlands, here’s the reality: Next Day Delivery isn’t a competitive edge - it’s the entry ticket. In a market dominated by bol, “order today, deliver tomorrow” is the baseline expectation. But speed alone won’t secure long-term success. What truly matters is reliability. Delivery performance is measured precisely, and platforms translate those metrics directly into visibility and ranking requirements. What this means in practice for international sellers, why Next Day Delivery alone isn’t enough, and which common mistakes still cost brands performance in the Dutch market is outlined in our latest blog post Logistics as Market Access: What Sellers Really Need to Deliver in the Dutch Market.

JD.com is acquiring Ceconomy - and from a European perspective, the deal raises far more questions than the headlines suggest. In this episode, Ingrid takes a deep dive with China expert Ed Sander. They discuss why JD is not treating Europe as a growth adventure, but as a strategic detour. They unpack why JD’s own platform experiments such as Joybuy and Ochama failed in Europe, why trust and localisation are decisive here - and why Ceconomy is less a retail asset for JD than a distribution shortcut. The episode also focuses on the growing negotiating power of Chinese players that bundle Western and Chinese brand volumes - with tangible consequences for prices, margins, and market structures. An episode about structural shifts in European commerce - and why this deal should be understood as a signal rather than a one-off.

The marketplace landscape is changing rapidly - not through isolated innovations, but through a fundamental redistribution of control. TikTok is building its own logistics infrastructure in Europe, Google is opening up agent-based commerce via the Universal Commerce Protocol, Amazon and eBay are closing their catalogs to AI agents, OpenAI is introducing a new fee tier with Instant Checkout, and Temu continues to grow through radical control over prices and processes. In this news episode, Ingrid joins Marcus Höhne, entrepreneur in a family business and long-time marketplace practitioner, to examine what these developments mean from a retailer's perspective. Together, they discuss where operational complexity is really increasing—and where it is merely being shifted, when additional fees are still manageable and when margins are structurally eroding, how logistics or price control are creating new dependencies, and which platforms still offer optional access instead of implicit lock-in.

Note from the sponsor base:

Repricing on marketplaces is often seen as a margin killer. But that assumption is misleading. Base, a solution provider for marketplace integration and repricing, knows from his practical experience: It’s not repricing that’s the problem - it’s the lack of strategy behind it. On marketplaces, visibility isn’t determined by the lowest product price, but by the total offer price - including shipping, fees and overall cost logic. Without clear guardrails, automation can quickly lead to margin erosion. What’s needed are solid fundamentals: a clear definition of relevant competitors, category-specific repricing rules, minimum prices, margin thresholds - and a realistic understanding of how Buy Box mechanics actually work. That’s exactly what we break down in detail in our new blog article. Click here to learn more about repricing!

Note from the sponsor eDesk:

Marketplace customer support often feels chaotic. In reality, it is surprisingly predictable. Most tickets revolve around the same recurring questions: Where is my order? Has it shipped yet? Can I still cancel? When teams answer these requests manually, they are not doing customer support - they are doing administrative work. At significant cost. eDesk addresses exactly this problem. As a helpdesk solution built specifically for marketplace and multichannel sellers, eDesk connects the inbox directly to more than 300 marketplaces - from Amazon and eBay to Mirakl and Kaufland. Instead of simply centralizing messages, it adds context: order status, tracking data, and relevant marketplace information are immediately available and can be answered automatically. Less tab switching, less copy-pasting, and more reliable SLAs. Which ten support questions account for the majority of all tickets - and how they can be automated - is detailed in our new Deep Dive “Marketplace Support Reality".