As Harvard Business Review puts it, no industry is reducing faster and more hurriedly than retail. The dichotomy will end when you know the e-commerce versus retail game.
- For all the brouhaha surrounding this dichotomy, which includes offline competitor, digital versus physical, old war has ended.
- It’s not a location but choice, which has commerce’s biggest scope as well as its biggest threat. The threat is looming now on the business.
- In defense of the apocalypse of retail, you’ve mounting brick and mortar crashes and losses.
- The bankruptcy count, spanning for four years, sits at over 57 landmark chains.
- In-store share and manufacturing market share for consumer-packaged items are declining or flat.
- Microbrands are born-online. They have devoured the bulk of a growth. The gains of e-commerce will keep trouncing the retail market in the coming years.
- The uncomfortable and harsh twist is the brick and mortar reality continues dominating online sales.
- The margin is over $20 trillion. The gap is going to widen with time.
- After a quarter of a century, the speed of ecommerce is slowing down.
- It was Amazon that took 80% of gains in 2018. It was one of the top five retailers online.
- DTC is emerging as the future of commerce.
Device usage will gain more prominence
When it comes to the future of e-commerce, you can see one thing clearly. There will be much more significance to place on the device by product buyers and sellers. They do this while shopping online.
- Things have just become the opposite now. E-commerce businesses are focusing a lot of building and designing their online stuff with mobile users.
- They are prioritizing mobile users over desktop users.
- It might sound like a bizarre switch, but it always makes immense sense and space, especially when you know that an estimated 46% of every commerce decision will keep mobile users in mind. You will see this trend in 2020.
- For context’s sake, the figures show a whopping $285 billion in revenue.
- The situation is potentially more intriguing. Research states that 56% of online buyers use their mobile phones to research for and procure products when shopping them from home.
- This belies the previous assumption from many people, who fixated on the concerned mobile websites getting primed to the easily digestible zone for on-the-go shoppers.
- Now, buyers are looking for the full and comprehensive experience on every device.
- For those running their store on Shopify, it’s going to too simple to tap into or please your target audience.
- Talking about audience, you can get them from Blastup.com.
- Emerging markets like China, India, South Africa, and Russia will play a huge role in the expansion of e-commerce.
On the impact
The effects of dynamic branches of e-commerce on the regular and physical panorama are now building up. So far, the most conspicuous changes have been in developing and arguably rich countries, especially China and India.
- With an ebbing demand for physical shops, demand for warehouses and storehouses will surge.
- But what about the shops and stores that are no longer draw customers. Where will all the new outlets go?
- You need to know that you’ve no easy way of blending them or turning one into another.
- Firms want to construct warehouses in the vicinity of their consumer hubs. However, malls are most likely to suffer and shut down.
- So, you probably have to build warehouses in proximity to residential areas. The companies are already competing with residential builders for land.
- In developing countries, you have numerous regions planning to erect logistics hubs and new homes together.
- Since land is expensive and scarce, warehouses are bound to get bigger and taller.
- For same-day delivery, you have smaller distribution units springing up near central business zones/districts.
- Rents will also rise as per reports. Ecommerce is changing business landscapes in a huge way. It will keep moving markets along the way.
- The coming decade will witness unimaginable changes. You will have drone services, automated shipping tools/vehicles, and other things to bolster delivery timings.
Enter the future
Businesses opened the floodgates with the first-ever secure online purchases. 1995 saw the future giants of the sector making the process as seamless as it gets. The last decade experienced e-commerce domination, not only due to enhanced technology but also due to an increase in customer participation or/and interest.
- The trends could just be the reason behinds its meteoric rise in today’s corporate world.
- Online marketplaces deserve a special mention in this regard. There are numerous platforms that have become an extremely convenient choice for marketers and vendors to showcase and sell their goods and services.
- Marketers can promote their stuff and customers can shop.
- The entire mechanism has added a deep layer of confidence and convenience to buyers, courtesy a range of brands and product offerings, relevant feedback and testimonials, and the bandwidth to compare purchases and make them.
- Currently, there are more than 63% of sellers that are exclusively online. 55% of these sellers have a profit margin above 21%.
- Since 2014, you have large marketplace companies like Magneto, Flipkart, and Alibaba growing over 53% over a three-year phase.
- Social shopping and digital marketing are the two most crucial aspects. There’s no better evidence of mobile influence and consumer behavior on e-commerce than marketing.
- Digital marketing has helped firms to interact directly with consumers. They thrive on apps or places where you’re likely to be present or spend more time.
A summation of sorts
Ecommerce is primarily about planning and execution. If you get your mathematics right, other things will follow. You need to have enough time and traffic for your website to establish.
- If you’re in the ecommerce game or threshold, you know how it’s changing constantly.
- It’s also upgrading advanced technologies to improve its modalities. Companies are now battling against one another to have a greater share of the humble pie.
- Although the future of ecommerce continues to be uncertain, certain things are a constant.
It will improve delivery times and customer service all the more. It will also enhance product selection, which will bolster your user experience.