Why is eCommerce not growing faster in retail?

Companies’ efforts to make progress in eCommerce are restrained in this country. Investments are being made and multichannel, omnichannel and touchpoint concepts are generally being pursued. The aim is to provide customers with an end-to-end user experience. These are all noble efforts and they improve eCommerce in general, of course. But, if I may say so, it is still divisional thinking.

(Reading time: 5 minutes – English version here)

Since eCommerce emerged 15 years ago, I have asked myself many times why eCommerce was called a separate sales channel. Did people not understand the term sales channel (textbook!)? Or did they just want it that way? Then why didn’t the sales channel, let’s say, “fax” exist? The web industry gratefully accepted these concepts and views, because this way of thinking was conducive to projects. Recently, however, a certain insight has emerged and “just commerce” is now being propagated. Certainly a step in the right direction, albeit a late one.

The web industry has done itself and its customers a disservice by propagating this divisional thinking, because consumers never thought and still don’t think in terms of divisions. And they don’t act according to categories anyway. I still have to hear the myth of online and offline customers from customers. The majority of customers don’t really care whether their dealings with a company are online or offline. They simply do it the way that is easiest for them or what they feel most like doing. Sometimes online, sometimes offline – and if there were more options, probably quite often a mixture.

The boundaries between online and offline commerce should disappear completely, because the customer doesn’t know these boundaries either.

Meanwhile,
site operators, consultants and implementation providers are continuing to build online stores in the classic style (yes, of course, including me), implementing the latest concepts and optimizing and improving as much as they can. Nevertheless, growth rates cannot keep pace with the digitalization of society. I believe there are two reasons for this:

Current eCommerce concepts only cover a minority of customers’ needs
The classic online store is quite helpful and I almost only shop this way. I get on well with it. However, it’s too complicated for a large proportion of the population. Mobile shopping is also used far too little compared to the number of people who own a smartphone. I say that’s because it’s simply still far too complicated and cumbersome. Shopping has to be easy and fun. Whether that’s online or offline. Many online offers may have become simpler, but only very few are really fun. Current eCommerce concepts do not take this into account enough.

Divisional thinking prevents solutions that combine digital and offline components in the interests of the customer
As long as companies still have separate teams for online marketing and conventional marketing, for marketing and sales, for offline stores and online stores, and as long as reporting in particular still shows separate areas for online and offline, it is difficult to establish overarching solutions. The competitive thinking that is so naturally encouraged in the business is too strong. This is wrong and harmful for companies. Every entrepreneur should not care whether the profit was generated offline or online. His employees should simply use the available resources in the current market situation to provide the best possible and most economical offer for customers. Whether the resources are defined online or offline is irrelevant. It’s actually quite simple.

What do we really need in eCommerce?

As a first step, we need to mentally abolish eCommerce. In other words, precisely the divisional thinking described above. I know this is a bit of a “wish upon the universe” and probably won’t happen any time soon. As a second step, we need providers to act as if there were no online stores. Instead, they should ask themselves how we can design the shopping experience for our customers in such a way that it is as easy and fun as possible. This is based on the premise that more than 80% use the internet several times a week and almost 40% of these are mobile.

What we need is a retail revolution like Duttweiler back then.

Gottlieb Dutweiler (for our German readers: the founder of Migros and the man who brought the modern supermarket concept to Switzerland) also used the new technical and social possibilities to revolutionize the market. In my opinion, what we need is a fundamentally new retail concept that reflects the spirit of the times and the technological and social possibilities. Similar to Migros back then, it will completely revolutionize the market, reduce costs and guarantee customers a much simpler and friendlier shopping experience.

I wonder whether this new retail concept will have to be copied from the US or whether the European continent will have the courage to pioneer it. Looking at the local venture scene, however, I don’t have such high hopes.

What could a completely new retail concept look like? I have some ideas and will go into them in a separate post. If you have any ideas, just let me know and I’ll be happy to incorporate them.