“ABI Research forecasts total e-commerce revenue of US$3.52 trillion in 2020, growing Year-over-Year (YoY) at nearly 19%."

The above from a piece of recent research around the potential future for eCommerce is predicting some stellar growth, perhaps at the cost of profit in order they invest to remain ahead of the competitive landscape.

A significant part of that pressure today is coming faster than anytime in the history of the commercial internet we have come to know.

Many years ago when eCommerce was in its infancy we took our lead from the west, in particular from the good old US of A......but no more!

We have become used to all the effort and investment to drive 'traffic' towards our eCommerce websites.....but no more!

From what I can see the majority of real commerce innovation is coming not from the west, but from the east and China has now taken that lead with others playing catch up, if at all.

China Chart and Research from McKinsey and can be found here.

As the chart above highlights 2019 saw a pivotal year from our friends in the east. This would suggest that all companies involved in online commerce should be paying closer attention, learn quickly, test fast, and deploy at scale.

China also leads in the area of 'Social Commerce' way ahead of all of Facebook's acquisitions and so called innovations. If this is fact do you and your team have an in-house working group who are really looking at what 'social commerce' is other than something to just post your latest 'offer' or 'promotion' - is today's customer tomorrow's competitor?

Do they even know what impact platforms like 'TikTok' will have on the next wave of consumers coming through?

What about the superpower of 'Social Media' in all its forms and platforms around the globe that stood at 3.7bn people at the end of 2019?

Then there's the huge shift in D2C that's seeing brands that were once your supplier choosing to go direct to the consumer, and where 90% of those consumers say they are more than happy to deal with them - todays supplier is possibly tomorrows competitor.

Who in your 'Change Making' team are focused on answering the big question around 'how we deliver a true multi-channel' experience?

If the answer sits just with your marketing team then I'm afraid your already fucked!!!

China giants Alibaba and JD.com now have greater focus on growth through lower-tier cities, chasing fast growing, third place Pinduoduo’s rural playbook to reach the next 600 million people. 

Finally, and just to drive the point home even further - Singles Day in China for 2020 will surpass not only all of the U.S. retail holidays (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday), but 2019’s record-setting US$38.4 billion for Alibaba alone, at a 26% increase YoY.

If you and your company would like to explore how I might help you better understand these changes, along with ideas to help mitigate risk then by all means drop me a DM.