The evolution of e-commerce
The e-commerce sector has been growing over the past few years and has become a major sector in the retail industry, representing more than 10% of retail sales in the world. More and more people decide to shop online because it is more convenient, and it is now also easier to do so with all the new technologies.
E-commerce has been improving at different levels:
- - Social commerce
- - New Retail
- - Drone delivery
Social commerce is using social networks as a place where you can sell products to customers, in other words it is e-commerce on social networks. It is a new marketing strategy to establish a social network and boost sales.
Many social networks are using this tool such as Facebook with its ‘Shop now’ button. Companies can have a page where they sell some of their products. Companies are also able to sell products with the ‘Buy now’ button on Twitter that goes with any product that has been tweeted. As for Instagram, it is now possible to shop directly from posts with products you’re interested in just by clicking on "view the product". That way consumers can buy products they just came upon without looking for them and without changing websites. This started in 2014 with Facebook and Twitter followed by Instagram and Pinterest in 2015.
Nowadays more and more people have smartphones and use social media. On average every person with a smartphone usually spends 3 hours a day on social media. It is a place where customers are likely to get attracted by products without even going on the company's website to look for them. In fact, they can stay on their app and buy at the same time.
China has the largest e-commerce market and is innovating in this field with the New Retail strategy. Since 2016, new strategies have emerged in China companies have always tried to adapt to those new strategies. The expansion of e-commerce players into physical commerce has presented a new challenge for traditional distributors. Alibaba announced its New Retail project which consists of an online and offline strategy. It opened Hema Fresh a high-end and ultra-connected supermarket. To follow the same steps Carrefour opened a new store with Tencent under the brand “Le Marché” to face its competitors Alibaba and JD.com which both opened New retail stores. “Le Marché” developed a new method for people to do their shopping, which consist in scanning barcodes in the store and then order from the website for the products to be delivered at home within 30 minutes. This is a first step for some of those companies in the omnichannel process. Omnichannel retail puts the customer at the core, and not your product. It’s about communicating in ways that are aligned with why people use a given channel and showing awareness of their individual stage in the customer lifecycle. Customers can purchase wherever they are and omnichannel retail removes the boundaries between different sales and marketing channels to create a single experience of commerce with no distinction between channels such as website, social, physical, email.
Moreover, Alibaba and Carrefour established a new payment method, therefore in both “Le Marché” and Hema Fresh it is possible to pay with face recognition and the app WeChat or Alipay, depending on the store.
The main issue with e-commerce is that you have to wait until you receive what you ordered and sometimes you need it or just want it right away. Drone delivery is a solution to shorten delivery times. It is possible to receive the package at home a couple of minutes after you placed your order, depending on your location. Drone delivery is faster and cheaper as there are no labor costs. It is also easy to track and can deliver perishable goods in record time. However, it is not legal everywhere yet and several criteria such as package size and weather are still challenges that need to be overcome before being adopted massively. Drone delivery is an innovation that will probably keep on increasing e-commerce.
E-commerce is indeed thriving and will continue to thrive. Many new innovations will appear and change our habits. Artificial intelligence will focus on what customers want and suggest personalized options.
Anais P.
Hello Anais
ReplyDeleteYour article was informative and a good read. I was wondering if, with the increase of e-commerce in the market, brick and mortar stores will disappear in the future? Do you know if a solution exists to fight the development of e-commerce for small shops? How can they compete with e-commerce?
Alice. C
Hello Alice,
DeleteFirst of all, thank you for your comment!
As far as I am concerned I don’t think that brick and mortar stores are doomed to disappear, however there will probably be less stores in the future as e-commerce is probably going to keep on increasing its market shares.
Therefore, I don’t really think that small stores can compete because it is a different way to sell products, however, the main advantage for small shops is that sellers can create relationships with their customers and e-commerce isn’t able to compete on the communication level for now.
Hopefully I answered all your questions.
Anaïs
Good morning Anais,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your article, I find it very interesting.
You pointed out that one of the issues of e-commerce is delivery. Yet from my point of view, the biggest problem is concerning the use of our personal data. Personally, I do not frequently buy on the internet because I am afraid hackers might use some pieces of information such as my credit card number.
You remind us that we continue to innovate which can let us think that the theft of personal data will eventually be solved. Yet at the contrary, don’t you think that hackers can also innovate and develop new forms of hacking making it invisible for us to know if we have been hacked?
Throughout your research, you may have read an article concerning the issue, or the negative impact, of hacking or the theft of personal data on the e-commerce industry.
I cannot wait to know your opinion :)
Thank you in advance.
Floriane.M.
Good morning Floriane,
DeleteThank you for your comment and your interesting questions!
I agree with you that the use of personal data is one of the main drawbacks of e-commerce. However, if we are very careful when buying on the internet and if we make sure we are on protected websites, hackers have less chances to access credit cards’ numbers or other information.
Moreover, it is possible to prevent hackers from having access to customers’ information for example when you buy on the internet it is better to choose not to save credit cards’ numbers. It is the same for companies they shouldn’t store information about customers.
I hope I answered all your questions, it was a pleasure to talk with you about e-commerce and the use of personal data.
Anaïs
Quite an interesting topic!!! I also have a great interest in e-commerce and keep track of all the news related to e-commerce. As the largest e-commerce company around the world, Alibaba has made a great many efforts to innovate the e-commerce sector and has thus become a trailblazer in the innovation and development of e-commerce. It can be told from the article that the author has really made some researches on the suject and provided a detailed illustration of its current development. There are some grammar mistakes in several sentences, which renders the meaning of the whole sentence a little bit incomprehensible.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is quite a good and well-informed article. Thanks a lot!!!
Hello XinMin,
DeleteThank you for your comment and remarks. It is true that Alibaba is the leader in e-commerce but maybe as e-commerce is in constant development new competitors are going to appear.
I am glad we had the opportunity to talk about this subject.
Anaïs
Hi Anais,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your article, it is a very interesting topic.
Do you think that in the future drone delivery will replace ordinary delivery services?
Thank you in advance.
Vita V.
Hello Vita,
DeleteThank you very much for your comment and question!
I think that it is possible for drone delivery to replace ordinary delivery services in the future. However, it will probably take several years before it is the case as there are still many laws to protect people especially in France.
It was a pleasure to talk about this topic with you!
Anaïs