Spécial retailers*

CP6 le 8 Octobre 2008 de 10h45 à 11h45 : "Online shopping cross-border: a world of new opportunity"

Une conférence organisée par IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) et animée par son CEO, James ROPER, vous permettra d’échanger, entre autres, avec Nick LANSLEY Head of Research and Development-TESCO (UK), Don MARSHALL Consumer Distribution Manager IKEA.com (UK), Margaret MILAN Fondatrice EVEIL & JEUX (F) et Présidente du Comité Stratégique FNAC /EVEIL ET JEUX (F)….

Un milliard d’acheteurs en ligne a généré 1,8 trillion d’€ en 2008 dans le monde. Une part infime de ce chiffre d’affaires à la croissance exponentielle, est liée à l’internationalisation de la distribution moderne. Cette part devrait croître aux environs de 20% en 2012, dès que les freins liés aux législations nationales, aux transports, à la sécurisation des échanges et des paiements seront levés.
Encouragés par la Commission Européenne, les distributeurs européens, après avoir affûté leur savoir-faire sur leur marché domestique, se préparent aujourd’hui au marché global à travers l’e-commerce pour le grand profit des consommateurs. Nous verrons, de manière concrète, comment les distributeurs peuvent exploiter les opportunités issues du boom des nouvelles technologies.

e-Retail: The Trillion Dollar Trade Route

IMRG’s CEO, James Roper, talks about the meteoric global growth of interactive media in retail (IMR) and his new international service, IMRWorld.org that helps businesses and governments in Europe and worldwide to embrace it.

Over a billion people will shop online this year. By 2010, the globalized internet shopping market will be worth five trillion dollars and a fifth of this trade will be cross-border. The impact of this e-commerce explosion on retailers and brands everywhere is already colossal, as the lines between the distribution channels and even countries blur or disappear, and once reliable business models evaporate. But for retailers especially, seismic waves of new opportunities and threats are heading their way, and their readiness and response to them will be critical.
In just 12 years, the proportion of the world’s population using the internet has risen from less that 1% to 20%. Most leading retailers are now trading online, and yet the latest data shows that two thirds of EU merchants still only sell domestically, and only 10% take orders online from a selection of several other EU states.
Already, a fifth of the world’s 6.6 billion people use the internet, and 85% of those 1.4 billion ‘internauts’, as the French call us, shop online. The internet’s appeal is irresistible, and every day it gets easier, cheaper and faster for people everywhere to get online to buy and sell. Within a decade, the majority of the world population will be netizens - habitual users of the internet, and habitual online shoppers.
Forty three of the world’s countries have internet penetration levels above 50%, and 226 countries do not. Norway and the Netherlands top the list, with 88% of their people online, closely followed by Iceland, with 85%. The UK ranks 20th, with 66% of the population online, a lower proportion than New Zealand, Sweden, Australia, Portugal, United States, South Korea, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Denmark, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Greenland. Beyond the 43 top internet-using countries, the average penetration rate is just 11.5%, but growth rates are far higher.
The elephant in the sitting room is Asia. With some 3.7 billion people, Asia represents 56% of the world’s population and has 40% of all internet users. Though Asia’s internet penetration, at 14%, is relatively low, it already has the world’s largest number of internet users - 510 million - far more than Europe, with 348 million, and double the 238 million US users. Asia’s internet usage growth rate is high, having grown 346% between 2000-2006, compared with a world average of 265%, 231% in Europe and just 120% in North America.
The extraordinary growth in e-commerce is attracting investment that is funding spiralling innovation. Retailers who don't keep up risk being sidelined, particularly in mature or saturated markets where the key drivers are growth into new markets. The internet is the mother of all new markets, and the natural trade route for US companies expanding into the EU and Asia Pacific, and European companies looking to trade across Europe and into the US and world-wide, as globalization accelerates.
The latest EU figures show that growth in cross-border shoppers across the 27 EU states more than doubled between 2003 and 2006, from 12% to 26% of the population. In France, a third of internet users already shop from abroad - mainly from the UK - while in Luxembourg, 67% of people have bought goods from another country, spending on average €1156 per head last year, more than any other Europeans. In Denmark, 91% of all distance selling is projected to be via the internet in 2008, and 54% of online Danes buy from abroad.
Canadians buy a whopping 57% of their e-retail purchases from now easily-available US stores. For a Canadian retailer, the effect of the internet on trade is potentially disastrous unless, of course, they are using it to reach and sell to the US consumers who are now just as available to them.
Many retailers throughout the world will soon choose or be obliged to embrace cross-border e-commerce - either offensively or defensively - as increasingly their customers’ business migrates online and traditional distribution channels decline in importance. However, numerous challenges still exist for any business setting out to trade internationally via the internet, including marketing, payments, security, data protection, languages, legislation, logistics, technology, inconsistencies in sizing and product characteristics, and not least culture.
Traditional industry associations around the world, particularly those involved in catalogue shopping and direct marketing, are rising to the task of helping their members engage in IMR on a domestic level, but until now there has been no neutral space in which they could exchange expertise and information with their counterparts in other countries for their mutual education and benefit.
To address this issue, James Roper, who founded IMRG in 1990 and remains its CEO, has established a new international service for the world’s e-commerce industry associations - IMRWorld.org. IMRWorld.org’s Director of Strategy is Colum Joyce, who was previously head of global e-business strategy at DHL, while eDigitalResearch.com provides its survey tools, and Devon-based Createanet facilitates the website. IMRWorld.org’s partners include IMRG in the UK, FEVAD in France, SHOP.ORG in the USA, THUISWINKEL in Holland, and the European Commission - a further 24 national associations are being invited to join.
IMRWorld.org is focussed on providing a single source of the most up to date global e-commerce information, establishing consistent and cross compatible e-commerce statistics for use by businesses and policy decision makers whilst also identifying and making visible to its stakeholders the best of breed technical, content and business model innovators.
Internet shopping often works in profoundly different ways from country to country, so there is much to be learned from the alternative approaches being taken to core elements such as payments methods, delivery options and customers’ available bandwidth, as well as the innovation and idiosyncrasies of brands and customers in other retail cultures.
European retailers are well placed to capitalise on international e-retailing opportunities, having gained experience in one of the world's strongest domestic markets. With a population just 20% of the size of the US, the UK has 60% of its e-retailing value, and has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 62% during the past ten months, more than double the rate in North America. Europe’s retailers also have natural advantages such as widespread international use of their languages and Europe’s reputation for having strong financial and legal infrastructures, and commercial integrity.
Like it or not, retailers everywhere will feel the winds of digital climate change that the internet is blowing in, and whether these feel like a warm zephyr or a howling gale will be largely dependent upon where they position themselves in this new IMR world.


Pour en savoir plus


TESCO : 43,719 Milliards d’€. Présent dans la distribution alimentaire et non alimentaire au Royaume Uni avec 1878 points de vente (80.3% CA) 261 magasins en Europe (11% du CA) 179 magasins en Asie (8.7% du CA) un site en ligne tesco.com.

*Spécial détaillants