The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Services, Q2 2024
Commerce has expanded from a purchase moment within a single channel to a total commerce experience across touchpoints and stages of choosing, buying, and owning a good or service. The consumer lifecycle has collapsed - customers expect to shop and transact in every moment and channel with order fulfillment any way they want. This evaluation of 10 commerce services providers in a 24-criterion assessment helps technology, marketing, and digital business leaders select providers - particularly agencies and consultancies with a full set of marketing and commerce capabilities - to implement flexible commerce backbones, thrive on marketplaces, build retail media networks, and use genAI to personalize content and engagement at scale.
No common features specified.
Vendors must, among other requirements:
A: This research evaluates 10 commerce services providers using 24 criteria grouped into three categories: current offering (50% weight), strategy (50% weight), and market presence (0% weight). The evaluation focuses on providers' ability to help companies create total commerce experiences across choosing, buying, and owning stages, including capabilities in flexible commerce backbones, marketplaces, retail media networks, and genAI-powered personalization.
A: This research should be used by technology, marketing, and digital business leaders responsible for commerce channels and the customer's path to purchase, including chief digital officers and chief marketing officers. It serves as a starting point for selecting commerce services providers based on specific organizational needs, with the ability to customize criteria weightings using the provided Excel-based vendor comparison tool.
A: To be included in this evaluation, providers must offer the most complete portfolios of total commerce experience services, spanning the full journey from buyer to owner including marketing communications, every transaction and engagement channel, and the after-purchase experience. Providers must also be most frequently requested by Forrester's enterprise clients, particularly business leaders responsible for commerce channels including chief digital officers and chief marketing officers.
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A: Current offering (50% weighting) evaluates each vendor's position on the vertical axis and measures the strength of their current services portfolio including commerce strategy, e-commerce solutions, retail and marketplace capabilities, technology services, content, analytics, platforms, retail media and managed services. Strategy (50% weighting) is placement on the horizontal axis and indicates the strength of providers' strategies, evaluating vision, partner ecosystem, platform strategy, innovation (with focus on genAI), pricing flexibility, talent development, and global delivery capability.