M+E Daily

The growing importance of digital experiences are only being amplified amid the current coronavirus crisis, according to Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO and president, as his company unveiled the Adobe Digital Economy Index (DEI), which it called the “first real-time barometer of the digital economy.”

“We’re clearly living in unprecedented times,” Narayen said March 31 as part of the virtual Adobe Summit “global digital experience” the company held online in lieu of its annual in-person event in Las Vegas.

“COVID-19 is changing everything about life and work as we know it,” he told viewers, adding: “Everyone is having to rethink the way they operate, including us at Adobe.”

Noting that the company’s first priority was the health of its employees, he said Adobe stopped all travel by its staff to in-person events, including its annual Adobe Summit, which was scrapped this year and shifted to the online event in its place. “We’re all working from home” at Adobe for now, he pointed out.

“While we’re facing difficult times now, I’m encouraged by the tremendous dedication and innovation of our employees and our customers,” he said, adding: “I’m optimistic that if we work together now, we’ll all emerge from the situation stronger than ever.”

Meanwhile, one thing is certain: “Digital is growing in importance,” he told viewers, noting it “isn’t only changing and reshaping our daily lives – it’s driving the economy.” And there is “one constant” in that digital economy: “It’s constantly changing,” he said.

However, “there has been no single way to measure consumer trends in the digital world,” he pointed out. Until now anyway, with the new Adobe DEI.

Adobe has “access to data from trillions of transactions, tens of millions of products and thousands of retailers, which gives us the unique ability to assess the global digital economy in real-time,” Narayen said. Its holiday shopping report has already shown how accurately the company has been able to predict the movement of the digital economy, he noted.

“Overall, we’re seeing digital deflation as falling prices of electronics, computers and apparel drive up purchasing power online,” he said. In the past few weeks, e-commerce sales are up 25% in the U.S. and 33% in the U.K., according to Adobe. As consumers started practicing social distancing, there was a 62% increase in consumers opting to buy products online and pick them up at stores, the company’s data shows.

In early March, a growing number of consumers bought fitness equipment as sales of that category grew 55%, which “may help us all overcome all the snacking that comes from working at home,” Narayen said.

DEI will help companies adjust and adapt their businesses in real time, he said. It “analyzes trillions of online transactions across 100 million product SKUs in 18 product categories,” according to Adobe.

“Growing at a faster pace than the economy as a whole, the digital economy has never been more important than during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers and businesses across the globe grapple with a digital-only reality,” the company said in a news release announcing DEI. “More broadly, as the digital economy continues to evolve, the need to accurately track online prices and actual spending to better understand trends and predict changes across industries and countries becomes even more critical,” it said.

Adobe DEI is powered by Adobe Analytics and based on a new “digital consumer shopping basket” measuring sales of online goods and services, the company said. Its data is based on the analysis of over 1 trillion visits to websites and over 100 million product SKUs, the company said. Adobe Analytics measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers. Several government bodies and industry trade organizations, including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Census Bureau, worked with Adobe to get an instant read on the digital economy and access to data, the company said.

Adobe said additional insights of DEI include:

1. Digital is driving new consumer shopping behavior. While some product categories have taken a bigger share of the digital basket while others have fallen off. The grocery category, for example, has increased its share of the basket from 6-8% in three years. Apparel retailers made the pivot to digital early and have seen their share of total online transactions increase from 21-23% over the last five years. However, computers have decreased from 21-8% “in the wake of the mobile computing boom.”

2. Digital purchasing power continues to rise. Consumers continue to get more for the dollars they spend online.

3. COVID-19 is driving a surge in e-commerce. Between Jan. 1 and March 11, purchases of several products have seen a significant jump in sales, with hand sanitizers, gloves, masks and anti-bacterial sprays up a whopping 807%; over-the-counter drug sales up 217%; toilet paper up 231%; and canned goods and shelf-stable items up 87%.

4. Innovation is pushing online prices down. Categories with the most product updates (new SKUs) released in a year (consumer electronics including computers) have seen online prices decrease, digital purchasing power increase and have kept U.S. inflation down overall. Online electronics prices, for example, have decreased over 40% over a five-year period.