New Commerce Data: Findings From Elastic Path’s State of Composable Commerce Survey

Recently, Elastic Path and RetailDive partnered to survey 200 retail executives at companies with $100 million to $3.5 billion in annual revenue. Before launching the survey, we knew that leading brands are prioritizing digital solutions that allow for personalized, consistent experiences across all touchpoints. But what does this mean in practice?

In short, composable commerce. Composable commerce is an approach that empowers brands to build commerce solutions from multiple best-of-breed vendors, and bring unique commerce visions to life. In the full report, we provide a deep dive into composable commerce adaptation, how brands choose and implement a composable approach, and the tools brands use. Here, we’ll recap a few takeaways from the State of Composable Commerce report.

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Finding #1: Brands are familiar with and have implemented composable commerce

The first headline takeaway from the report is that composable commerce has gone mainstream. The vast majority of brands are familiar with and have implemented some type of composable commerce approach.

96% of retail executive respondents say they are very or extremely familiar with composable commerce. No respondents were unfamiliar with composable commerce in general.

Beyond familiarity, more than nine in 10 respondents (92%) say their company has adopted a composable commerce approach.

Brands know about composable commerce, they’ve adopted composable commerce, and they don’t see composable commerce going away anytime soon. Only 4% of respondents say they anticipated composable commerce being eclipsed by a new commerce technology in the next five years.

Finding #2: Brands are adopting composable commerce to get to market faster, reduce complexity

For brands, composable commerce is about overcoming challenges and meeting business requirements. In particular, brands are adopting composable commerce to get to market fast and reduce the complexity of their commerce solution.

Of brands that have adopted composable commerce, the most common motivator was increasing speed to market (26%). Other reasons included integrating with other technology tools quickly (26%), addressing shifting market and consumer trends quickly (26%), and reducing complexity (24%).

Basically, brands go composable to deliver innovative commerce experiences faster. And despite being a multi-vendor solution, brands find promise in composable commerce’s ability to reduce overall complexity.

Brands also see composable commerce as promoting consistent innovation and gradual improvements. In fact, the most important criteria when brands select a composable solution is the ease of making changes.

Finding #3: Composable commerce’s biggest challenge is the perception – and reality – of implementation time

The report indicates that in general, brands know about composable commerce, have implemented it, and believe it can help them get innovative commerce experiences to market. But the report also uncovers a significant challenge to composable commerce’s adoption: The inaccurate belief that adopting composable commerce takes months or years.

Of the brands that haven’t adopted a composable approach, the most common reason given for not going composable was that implementation takes too long. Just consider:

• 60% of all brands think adding third-party technology to commerce solutions takes more than six months.
• 69% of brands that have adopted composable commerce say implementing a composable approach took more than 6 months; 27% say implementation took more than one year.

Overall, brands believe that composable commerce’s biggest drawback is time. In the eyes of many retailers, adopting composable commerce means months and months of work before realizing business value.

This doesn’t have to be the case. At Elastic Path, we have a family of composable products that your brand can use to realize business value fast, and to adopt a composable approach in weeks or days or even minutes.

Whether it’s our new Shopify bundling integration or the frontend capabilities of CX Studio or the ease of instant-on commerce integrations in our Integrations Hub, your brand can realize composable commerce’s benefits fast – and get real business results to start 2024.

Want to hear more? You can get the full State of Composable Commerce for free, right here.

Prefer a phone call? Speak with an Elastic Path expert today to hear more about the state of composable commerce and to discuss your unique commerce needs.