OPINION
Online versus offl ine sales
Retailers can do more to sell better online, make the most of third-party marketplaces and improve their own websites, argues Neteven founder and CEO Greg Zemor…
TODAY RETAILERS have to consider every channel, meaning both online and offl ine. Traditional retail is going down – not that many people are going to stores and a lot of them are buying online – but it’s not a matter of cutting the number of stores, it’s a matter of ‘how do we sell more’? Online they cannot just sell on their own website.
What we have seen is that for the past year the number of retailers that have gone online with their own stores, their own brand, their own strategy and their own website has dropped.
Nobody else is coming into the market because the cost is huge and they’ve seen that they can drive margins more by using a pre- existing marketplace such as Amazon rather than launching their own website. They’ve started to move from the B2B offl ine to the B2C online – some of them, not all of them – and now we’re seeing that the move, the margin, and the marketplaces are all in the right position for that.
if you decide to sell on a marketplace, it’s not yours, so it’s important to make sure it fi ts with your strategy. Offl ine and online need to be managed all together.
The next step is to go between “When you
create your own website you have control, but if you decide to sell on a marketplace, it’s not yours, so it’s important to make sure it fi ts with your strategy.”
Most of the stores are now seeing that it’s not profi table to invest in marketing to drive consumers to their own website, but with a third-party marketplace, the marketplace itself spends that marketing – they provide the branding. When you create your own website, you have control over everything, but
offl ine and online, and the next big challenge in the e-commerce sector is how to offer web to store, store to web and Click and Collect. If the offl ine world should grow again, the retailers need to provide visitors with more services and have tablets where consumers can check online where the product is available, and order it, so they pick it up the next day in the store. It will reassure the buyer too, as they will know they can always return the product straight to the store.
Greg Zemor, Neteven
It’s not a challenge, it’s key to do so, because High Street retailers already have the offl ine presence. If you look at Amazon, they are very strong online and they do things offl ine a little bit, but the key strength of the offl ine stores is that they already have that offl ine presence. Now retailers need to make their stores much more dynamic,
and much more lively. They also need to be more connected for consumers, and that’s where they will really provide a 360-degree customer experience and optimise the link between their online and offl ine business.
Greg Zemor is founder and CEO of marketplace management fi rm Neteven.
www.neteven.co.uk
The desktop’s renaissance
GfK’s account manager Andrew Walsh takes a look at how traditional desktops are continuing to experience an upturn in fortunes…
THE IT sector grew by fi ve per cent in June 2014 versus last year, with software close to claiming 50 per cent of all the market volume in the month.
However, for many peripheral categories, lower average prices have led to a severe loss of market value over the same period – culminating in a 15 per cent value loss for the entire IT sector. Software was the main victim of this trend – that of lower average prices – to aid this volume growth. Sales value over the same period declined by 25 per cent, a stark contrast to the volume growth. This trend has also hit the storage
sector – experiencing
volume growth yet seeing a decline in market value of 22 per cent, again alluding to a strong preference towards lower selling prices from the consumer and a declining infl uence of
premium offerings. The networking market completes this triumvirate of peripherals trends, experiencing a 15 per cent
volume growth on last year, yet losing fi ve per cent in market value. These three
Starting with the positives, the traditional desktop segment continues to experience an upturn in fortunes – in large part thanks to a continued renaissance in PC gaming in the retail sector, which has predominately been desktop focused as opposed to notebooks. To this extent, desktop volume growth has been modest at three per cent, yet the clamour for higher specs and faster performance has led to a higher average selling price in the market, culminating in a 20 per cent value growth this month versus last year.
“The desktop continues to experience an upturn in fortunes – thanks to a continued
renaissance in PC gaming in the retail sector, which has
predominantly been desktop focused.”
trends show an increasing affordability of major peripheral categories as the hardware sector experiences mixed fortunes.
Andrew Walsh is account manager at GfK.
www.GfK.com
Andrew Walsh, GfK
The quarterly result is even more positive for the desktop segment, highlighting this revival, growing in volume by 25 per cent in the retail channel and registering 40 per cent value growth. Although quarterly results can often overlook a strong individual monthly performance, it cannot mask the continued downward trend of the mobile computing segment, driven by notebooks, which account for 80 per cent of the category volume. The desktop segment growth shows value growth can be obtained from a mature market by
enhancing the product
performance, with users willing to spend more if it leads to a greater consumer experience.
22 | PCR August 2014
www.pcr-online.biz
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