DMF Dubai: Igor Beuker Explores Trends In Retail & eCommerce

In my keynote at Digital Media Forum Dubai on 24 March 2015, I explored the trends in retail and e-commerce.

From an innovation point of view, for retailers, digital means much more than just e-commerce. They need to master from mobile phone and tablet shopping to social commerce, mobile-optimized e-mails, and beacons.

The omnichannel experience in retail has many faces, and consumers expect them all to be friendly and useful. It’s safe to say that technology keeps CIOs and CMOs in the retail industry awake at night.

Meanwhile, from a marketing point of view, traditional retailers are struggling with the fact that new marketing is about relationships, not the medium.

To capture attention, retailers’ efforts towards advertising, content, marketing, and media will require an entirely new approach. I consider this the transformation towards becoming a data-driven, integrated digital marketing firm.

Especially today, where traditional retailers need to fight agile consumer tech companies like Amazon and Alibaba.

Or other pure players that have already mastered CRM, atomic content marketing, and smart programmatic ad-buying methods.

Keynote Igor Beuker: The Future of Retail & eCommerce

As a professional public speaker, I have the pleasure of working with a dedicated team of analysts. They hunt for trends and disruptive technologies and interview influencers from the retail space.

It’s my pleasure to share these actionable insights with the attendees at DMF Dubai. My goal here? To inspire retailers to reinvent and refresh themselves.

Due to the Ted-alike timeslots – keynotes at DMF are 20 minutes – I have been cutting my story to its core. Indeed, quite a challenge when ‘less is more’.

So in dazzling pace event attendees at Digital Media Forum Dubai can expect the following elements in my keynote:

• Meta trends and technologies that will disrupt all industries
• What keeps CMOs and CIOs in the retail industry awake at night
• Why retailers need to reinvent and refresh themselves right now
• Inspiring innovations that will fuel the future revenues of retail
• How to find and funnel the webrooming and showrooming consumers
• Transformation towards data-driven, integrated digital marketing
• Creating the ultimate omnichannel experience to drive growth
• Fighting agile, consumer tech companies like Amazon and Alibaba
• Phenomenal future of e-commerce, m-commerce, and social commerce
• Key take-outs of my keynote, opinion, and future vision
• Closing thoughts and Q&A

So in the coming few days, I will use my Swiss army knife to cut out some more examples to meet my timeslot with the accuracy of a Swiss watch.

I expect my analysts to battle for their lives to keep their examples in. But of course, the DMF participants have the final say. So I look forward to your feedback.

I might talk about Blockbuster going bankrupt due to the binge-watching Netflix generation. How Spotify killed Virgin and other music stores.

With these and other examples, I hope to help retailers understand the impacts new technologies will have on their businesses. And how they can capitalize on the huge opportunities of the 21st century.

But there’s more to explore.

How Starbucks Disrupts Its Own Marketing Strategy?

Starbucks is disrupting its own business and marketing strategy, again.

Not only are they carving out the word ‘coffee’ from their logo, they will also be serving lunch and dinner.

It’s bold but forced moved by Starbucks. The growing e-commerce trend brings less shoppers to the streets, so Starbucks needs to increase its ARPU beyond coffee.

Also, Starbucks will heavily bet on the mobile phone for in-store payments and the next levels of their loyalty program.

I will also talk about MyStarbucksIdea. They’re more than a brilliant open innovation platform that generated 277 consumer ideas in the past 5 years.

The R&D fueling platform is really pulling customers through the Starbucks funnel, moving them towards trial, loyalty, and advocacy.

So, what can retailers around the globe learn from Starbucks?

25% Of All Offline Retail Stores Will Close in 5 Years

Several retail experts my team interviewed were clear about the declining trend. Due to e-commerce, 25% of all offline stores will disappear from our streets in the coming 5 years. A shocking prediction.

What should retailers do?

Can city marketers help retailers? Is growing tourism a solution that will stop the retail trend ‘from profit to perish’? Dubai might be a great example.

Or can city boards and real-estate firms help retailers? By helping I must refer to the trend called ‘turnover rent.

Turnover-rent is best described as a relatively new and hybrid model in which retailers pay a lower monthly rental fee, plus a share of their monthly revenues as the rest of their rent.

But will turnover-rent offer a solution? And what if it’s not a trend but a hype that will soon blow over?

Are Your Shoppers Webrooming or Showrooming?

Data-driven retail CMOs are in the know. They have gained extremely valuable and actionable insights on their customer base, knowing if they are web rooming or show rooming.

Webrooming refers to the process of researching products online and then visiting a store to make a purchase.

We have seen some examples of smart retailers that have integrated Pinterest in their window shopping. You might notice similar examples in stores near you.

Showrooming, however, refers to visiting a shop or shop to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price.

We see many examples of consumers doing a price comparison on their mobile phones in the store, with the product in their hand. Next, they bought the same product on their mobile phone.

Can you imagine how painful this is for the retailer? How can they bend this nasty trend?

Can Retail CMOs Compete With Amazon and Alibaba?

eCommerce, Commerce, and Social Commerce show phenomenal growth across all markets. So how can retail CMOs compete with these agile consumer technology companies?

Amazon, for example, is a data-driven social CRM machine that readily invests billions of Dollars in robot and drone technologies. Now even offering same-day and one-hour delivery.

So it’s safe to say that Amazon is the most ARPU and data-driven company in the world, with a clear strategy: better, cheaper, faster. Building robots and drones fit their core promise!

In online payments, so many brands are fighting for a piece of the e-commerce pie. Visa, AmEx, Paypal, Apple, Google, and Samsung are all working on new wallets and mobile payments.

Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba however, has just found another way to fuel its massive growth. Shoppers at Albiba can now quickly pay with… a selfie!

So how can even the largest offline retail giants keep up with these agile, techy e-commerce firms?

Do they have the knowledge and budget to seamlessly integrate their siloed applications and data and drive more profitable interactions across all digital touchpoints?

Every webshop has Google analytics-alike tools inside. But when I ask leading global retail brands how they measure offline store traffic and conversion rates, it mostly stays awkwardly quiet.

If I was a retail CMO, I would work day and night on creating a much brighter omnichannel strategy. That sense of urgency I hope to make clear in Dubai.

Watch My Keynote on Video

It was a great event and I enjoyed talking to you. And thank you for your kind Tweets! Below, as promised, is my keynote on video.

 

If you want more, here’s my keynote Big Data For Brands & Media Owners, delivered at CEEDS by Webit 2015 in Sofia.

My Slides on SlideShare

In the above keynote on video, you are not always able to see the slides. So I uploaded them to SlideShare.

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About the Author

In the spotlights, Igor Beuker is a top marketing innovation keynote speaker and futurist known for his foresight on trends and technologies that impact business, economy, and society. Behind the scenes, a serial entrepreneur with 5 exits and an angel investor in 24 social startups. Board member at next-level media firms, changemaker at Rolling Stone Culture Council, Hollywood sci-fi think tank pioneer, award-winning marketing strategist for Amazon, L’Oréal, Nike, and a seer for Fortune 500s, cities, and countries.

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