The European opportunity for retailers and brands

IMRG, the UK’s eCommerce trade association, says cross-border sales in Europe are set to reach €36bn in 2013 to account for 10.6% of total online sales in the region. This is a mouth-watering prospect for online retailers and brands but there are plenty of challenges and regional differences to tackle before success is assured.

By Kestrel Lemen, Marketing Strategist, Bronto Software

Our CEO, Joe Colopy, recently took part in a panel session at an ecommerce trade show which focused on the European opportunity for retailers and brands.  Joining Joe on the panel were Darren Hitchcock of RichRelevance and Uriel Ballast from Shop2Market and the debate threw up a number of fascinating challenges for online businesses looking to enter new markets which I’ll share in this post.

Hitchcock cited Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing The Chasm, which argues that terms like multichannel and omni channel are missing the point as each channel is a completely different experience and retailers and brands should just be focusing on the customer.

According to Hitchcock, Sports Direct has taken on Europe, citing France and Italy as the fastest adopters of online which immediately led to a debate on national peculiarities.

Although attempts have been made to homogenise Europe, the language barrier is still apparent and even though, for example, a Belgian might speak fluent French, Ballast cited one retailer who expressed his preference for doing business with native speakers.

He underlined the importance for multi-national retailers to invest in local people who understand local culture and language for each region.

When looking to expand internationally, it’s imperative to treat each market on its own merits as not every region may be ripe or receptive to your offering.

Additionally, Ballast argued that the majority of social media fails for retailers and that it is a branding exercise that should be clearly distinct from sales. Hitchcock conversely remarked that one of the biggest demographics of Twitter users were time-poor, rich females who shop for a large number of people in their families.  To them, special offers and promos delivered via social media play a big part.

It was a lively debate and demonstrated that there are still so many fundamental differences between territories, even in Europe.  To succeed, retailers need to research each individual market, make sure their proposition is up to scratch, recruit local staff and then focus on the basics such as delivery on promise, payments and fulfilment.

One thing is for sure, European consumers may be just as demanding as the next but the size of the prize for retailers and brands that successfully enter the market is huge.

Check out our latest research on how retailers collect and use purchase-related data by downloading it here.