Our 24h society – 4 trends of (r)etail
Recently Trendwatching.com released its trending report on the future of retail. 4 major trends: Everywhere, MEtail, Easy & WWW, are coming along fast and will reform society into a 24h society. World wide we’re seeing a 24h society developing, but not in the old continent, Europe, were 9-to-5 still plays a major role in creating and shaping the society. It’s going to be a challenge for Europe to cope with this trends and keep their 9-to-5 society alive or transform to a 24h society. Asia and the Americ’a are already in pole position to adapt to this 4 trends.
E-Tail in numbers
The comScore report on retail websites gives us some new insights on how and why E-Tail will be the future of shopping.
Off course E-Tail is more than just online shopping….E-Tail describes the process the consumer follows to finally make the buying decision. 74,5% of the online Europeans visited a retail website in January 2011, a 8,5% growth over 1 year time. Off course there are differences between European countries: first movers like the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany and Ireland show a bigger reach then others, but with a growth in almost every country (except Sweden -0,2%) there is a bright future for online retail.
Online shopping still means a lot of comparison shopping. The easy access to information makes your off-line customer the informed customer. His online research makes him the expert, not the salesman. Sidenote: we need to rethink the role of the salesman….I still see a lot of salesman thinking they are the experts, NOT! They’re the cashier.
Besides comparing products we search meanly for apparel (28,4%) and consumer electronics (27,1%). This, off course, isn’t a complete surprise, since most manufacturers and stores have webstores attached to their websites.
Looking at the most popular online retailer…we see on company in the top 5 everywhere: Amazon. Again no surprise since they have a world-wide well-organized structure, and a strong reputation regarding customer satisfaction. Besides Amazon, Apple lists a couple off times, but merely it are local webshops of local companies who are popular online. Customers tend to love what they know, even online. So consumers are shifting to the online world, but mostly stick to the local shops they know.
E-Tail grows at a steady pace
Forrester research released the results of its 2010 survey on online retail. No surprises, but only a confirmation of trends…sounds familiar doesn’t it! US and EU 17 will see a steady increase in online sales each year of 10%, topping of at 279 billion $ in the US and 134 billion EUR in Eu17 in 2015. By 2015 online sales will represent approx. 8% of the total retail sales.
In the last year US has seen a growth of 18% (and EU 13%) in online sales, but a lot more offline sales are also “web influenced”. The adjusted e-commerce model is different from the 1.0 web commerce model. Business drive on 3 basic idea’s to connect with customers:
- act local
- think social
- be mobile
Look at Groupon (f.i.), who sells with the social leverage products of a local market, and can be reached 24/7 thanks to (mobile) social media. This is off course only one small example…but many others are out there!
Computers, apparel and consumer electronics are hot items to sell online, besides cars, travel and prescription drugs….
It’s needless to say, classical brick-and-mortar stores are looking at a challenge because online and “web influenced” shopping in the mobile world will suppress 0.0 retail…some offline retailers are already getting trouble like Borders bookstores who filed a chapter 11 in the US to be protected against creditors. Check out the business modeling page, on more insights how to deal with this shift!
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