The e-commerce branch encompasses all digital business traffic and is a branch for the future. Big players, such as Amazon, eBay or Alibaba are leading the way: if you want to sell products in the internet successfully, you need more than just a pretty online shop.
Progress is not stopping for B2B companies either, quite the opposite: the digital transformation is increasingly putting pressure on B2B companies to address the topic of e-commerce and online sales. In this context, e-commerce is not limited purely to sales, but also includes the customer journey, which begins with the marketing of a product and continues after the completion of a transaction.
Apples and pears falling from trees, grapes hanging from vines, and here in the office, home-grown zucchini are given away in all sizes, because colleagues with their own garden aren’t able to eat everything on their own.
Nature itself might be wasteful, but the food industry and humankind are even worse. One in eight items bought at the grocery store will be thrown out without ever being eaten. Restaurants, cafes and bakeries have to follow very strict requirements and dispose of much at the end of the day. And a lot of products that were produced and grown, don’t even make it to the market… Carrots are deemed too crooked and a yoghurt container could me missing a lid.
A digital transformation is helping everyone fight food waste. Buying food at reduced prices, cooking interesting recipes from ingredients you might not even think go together, and even artificially and automatically reducing prices for certain soon to expire products in supermarkets.
Microbrands have been producing more and more B2C brands for years. They are incessantly taking market share from traditional companies, putting some of them in distress.
But what do these small companies have that the big players don’t? And what can market leaders still learn from small companies?
Superheroes rarely wear jacked-up jeans and sneakers except to camouflage their identities. Superheroes wear super suits of course. Suits that let them fly. Suits that protect.
But the idea of protecting and optimising with fibres and integrated technology is by no means science fiction. Smart fashion has been playing an increasingly important role in the clothing industry for some time now. This is affecting superheroes and super geeks. Because smart clothing can save lives. It can make situations in video games seem even more realistic. But it can also empirically prove how often women in nightclubs are felt up without their consent.
Parts for cars and aeroplanes and even implants for humans… All could be manufactured on demand with 3D printing. 3D printing/manufacturing is getting trendy again. According to market research firm IDC, four out of ten manufacturers will utilise it in the next three to five years. Factors contributing to the boom include advances in hardware and software as well as an increasing variety of materials that can be used in such processes.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is becoming a major pillar of the fourth industrial revolution. More and more manufacturing companies are discovering 3D printing technology for themselves. Which sectors are using it more and more today? And more importantly, what are its strengths compared to traditional manufacturing approaches?
Today, brands are made more visible with websites, we look at blogs about home furnishing, and fashion brands for inspiration, we Google services, and that’s how we all end up on a corporate website. The importance of creative content for customer acquisition and retention is undeniably high. There’s competition for users’ attention as well.
So it’s important to show off a company again and again, as well as its products and brands, in a fun and informative way. But good web content requires good content management software behind it all.
Future shopping experiences blend the offline and online worlds. A study by EHI proves that omnichannel retailers are fast among the top 1000 online stores.
The combination of all distribution channels climbs to the second position of the most widely used digital business models and will determine the future of retail in addition to an online-only approach. »A classic multichannel strategy seems to be unpopular«, says e-commerce expert Christoph Langenberg from EHI.
Channel linking, however, requires a technical masterpiece. This keeps many small retailers from implementing appropriate services, so it’s mainly the top-selling retailers who rely on omnichannel strategies. Marketplace Otto.de has just announced a cooperation with the shopping centre operator ECE, in which online and offline shopping should be more closely linked.
However, integration isn’t the only growing pain companies suffer from in omnichannel scenarios. Measuring online-to-offline campaigns isn’t always possible. But Google is increasingly stepping up its efforts recently to capture the impact of digital campaigns on in-store purchases.
Consciously living and consciously consuming are trends that are no longer confined to a clichéd edge group. This new attitude to dealing with resources, oneself, and togetherness affects the individual as a private person, but also as a client, colleague, partner and entrepreneur.
In the German-speaking world, within the last few years, a packaging-free shop has joined others. Even supermarkets »without packaging« are a trend in the purchasing behaviour of more and more customers of all generations. How are retailers, manufacturers, and brands reacting to these demands?
People keep saying stationary retail is dead. But that’s not really the case. True to the motto »Transform or die!«, The role of branch locations is being redefined and promoted through innovative store concepts. Stationary businesses are no longer seen as just a sales instrument, but they are increasingly developing into service points.
The focus is therefore no longer solely on selling at any price, but to quench the thirst for information typical of the discovery phase and to arouse curiosity. For this, new branch concepts rely on a lot of technology and a small, frequently changing product range.
It is even desirable that customers come to the store, look at products there and try things out before they finally go back without having bought anything. The thought behind this? If the experience remains positive, the purchase will eventually be made through any channel.
All of this promises and enables a new concept, which is becoming more and more prevalent, especially in the United States: Retail as a service. What’s behind it, which success stories are paving the way, and why this approach for manufacturers and brands can be so attractive, will be clarified for you in this article.
Platforms. Really? Yes really. A buzzword, especially in e-commerce, that really isn’t losing any importance. But… Everyone wants to build a platform. Brands, retailers, and manufacturers kept asking themselves: Platforms, yes or no? But now they’re asking themselves which platform they want to integrate with. The answer is pretty simple. Go where your customers are.
And where are your customers? They are where the widest range of products and service are available. They’re where they can choose from this offer. Whatever is the easiest, fastest, and best priced. They’re shopping where it’s an experience. After all, those are the added values that go into creating an outstanding user experience – the sacred customer experience. And through platforms, brands, retailers, and manufacturers are able to fulfil that customer promise.
What the platforms of this time promise and why they’re so successful, will be brought to you today.
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