DHL eCommerce 2026 Trends Report: From Insight to Foresight

Good data is the foundation of much of my work*. Data grounds foresight in reality, points to trends, undermines false hypotheses. So when a client asks me to get involved in directing a large piece of research, analysing and communicating its findings, then that’s an opportunity at which I will leap.

I’ve been working with DHL eCommerce for a couple of months now on the 2026 Trends Report and it is a fantastic piece of research. 29,000 consumers surveyed over 29 countries, along with 5,800 businesses. It gives a fascinating picture of the state of eCommerce today, but also some brilliant pointers as to the direction of travel - including reinforcing some ideas I’ve been floating for a while. Like agent-to-agent commerce, an idea I first presented to a large food brand client nine years ago. 66% of retailers told us they expect consumers to let agents shop on their behalf within five years.

There is so much value in this report if you are a retail brand or in any way involved in online shopping, from the digital side through to delivery. It will tell you about the state of influence: who and what drives buying behaviour? About the speed-bumps along the purchase journey: it might seem obvious what bounces people from the checkout flow but there’s no excuse not to address it when you see how dramatic these numbers are. And about so much more.

If you prefer video content to written, you can also find a video on the DHL website of me walking you through the report findings. This was a new experience for me. Obviously I’ve done a lot of work on video, but I’ve not done anything with these production values before outside of broadcast media. It was great working with the marketing team to produce this - and slightly weird to see my face on the stand at the Deliver conference in Amsterdam where I helped to launch the report with the closing keynote on the first day.

DHL’s trade show stand for the Deliver conference in Amsterdam, featuring my face on a video screen.

So, in summary, two things. First, go check out the report. And second, if you’re a brand or a marketing team and you’re looking for a partner who can add foresight to your insight, be your media spokesperson, present your findings on video, and deliver the story on stage, then drop me a line.

*I had to consider singular/plural in this context and decided that since this is not a technical paper, I’ll treat ‘data’ as a singular mass noun.