2018 has been a year of seismic changes to the retail industry, and e-commerce in particular. Over the past year, we’ve seen retail giants Sears and Toys R Us file for bankruptcy, Amazon establish its advertising business as the third-biggest digital advertising platform and the U.S. Supreme Court overturn decades of precedent by deciding that state and local governments can require online retailers to collect sales tax even if those merchants don’t have a physical presence in the tax jurisdiction.

We’ve seen Amazon continue to garner market share, Walmart resume its acquisition spree with the purchase of Eloquii and Bare Necessities, and Wayfair latch upon the trend of retailers establishing their own retail sales holidays. Meanwhile, we’ve seen countless other developments such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (if it is approved by Congress) and GDPR that may yet have an outsized impact on the ways in which retailers operate.

So what developments will we see next year? It’s hard to say. A year is a long time, and it’s difficult to contemplate everything that might possibly take place. While the December issue, which focuses on the year ahead, doesn’t aim to offer a comprehensive peek at the year ahead, we offer a sense of some forthcoming developments…

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