Let me start off by saying that this is a topic that is very close to my heart. I work in the ecommerce space and believe that the lines between offline and online commerce is steadily falling away. When eBay did their results presentation earlier in the year, the online and offline relationship got a fair amount of coverage.
Category: eCommerce
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The Bing and Shopping.com partnership
I have been watching the moves that have been happening in Comparison Shopping Engine industry over the last 9 months. Google Product Search is making a lot of people and businesses squirm. In April Shopzilla was sold at a huge loss to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group LLC.
Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. says it is selling Shopzilla Inc., a comparison shopping site, for $165 million to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group LLC. That’s $360 million less than the $525 million Scripps paid for the site in 2005.
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fcommerce after f8
facebook commerce is a term that has been used to describe social commerce. Buying with your friends after asking them for their opinion instead of using reviews and third party recommendations. Having your products on a platform that has 800 million users should seem logical right? I am not convinced but I am willing to alter my opinion if I could get proper return on investment (ROI) statistics. fcommerce after the f8 developer could be a huge game changer and is something that all eCommerce executives should look at.
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Daily group buying 2.0
The last few weeks have seen a fair amount of content on the future of the group buying ecosystem. I believe that the daily group buying model is starting or has started evolving. Call it daily group buying 2.0, but more on that in a bit.
The deal fatigue that users are experiencing in mature markets have been widely reported. It indicates that the buzz is dying as the users are no longer buying the deals. The industry having low barriers to entry is ensuring that new companies enter the space on a daily basis (it is a bit of a vicious cycle). It all boils down to deal quality and the providers ability to create an experience that will accelerate impulse buying. The group buying concept in its simplest form is “impulse buying with a credit card on the Internet” .
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Subscription Commerce – The next big ecommerce vertical?
eCommerce is at the moment an industry which is hot. Hot in the sense that there is investment being done and new verticals are being created. Creative solutions that help users solve problems and make offline events happen online are emerging.
The most obvious example of this trend is, group coupon buying which has been made popular by Groupon and Living Social in the US. I have my own doubts over this area but the reason I mention this here is to highlight the fact that 2 years ago this ecosystem did not exist. So in the space of 2 years, multiple players have emerged and some of done this with a twist. Dealify for example have gone into ensuring that they offer hyper local deals. Gemgem focus on the mom and baby market here in South Africa.
Gemgem bases its business model on the successful US ‘Groupon-clone’ site called Plum District, which understands the importance of the family market. Its rising success is driven by the power of the mom population in the US. Plum District CEO Megan Gardner says, “We know we’re doing something different because of the narrow focus of the audience, no one is focusing on the moms and the other thing is the moms’ sales force. We are not a one-hit wonder media buy.”