In its second edition on June 4 and 5, the eDays e-commerce attracted nearly 250 top executives and high-level professionals, some of them joining the event from as far as France, Estonia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and Ukraine.
In addition to a thorough coverage of the current trends in Russian e-commerce, the event offered an opportunity to get to know how key market players and experts envision the future of retail and marketing in a global perspective.
From customer-centric e-commerce to Big Data
Thus according to Ivan Mazour, a UK-based expert with Russian origins, the two core trends in ecommerce in advanced western markets are RaaS (Retail-as-a-Service) and customer centricity.
“Whereas in previous years, some of the biggest challenges with building an ecommerce operation revolved around the technology – setting up the website, the logistics, and so on – these days technology providers have fundamentally met all of these challenges, meaning that e-commerce businesses no longer have to spend significant time or money on getting running, or on growing their technological infrastructure,” the expert believes.
“Competition has moved to being based entirely around customer experience, and the best ecommerce businesses are becoming customer centric, ensuring that the experience of buying from them is as tailored and personalised as possible,” Mazour concluded.
Customer centricity is also essential in online advertising, as Google’s Lado Lebanidze showed in his presentation. “Segmenting advertising audiences by expected value improves the efficiency of marketing spend,” he said, this expected value being best assessed or predicted by such behavioral signals as site visiting, product selection and purchase history.
Implied in this shift towards the consumer is the growing importance of Big Data in e-commerce. This topic was discussed from different angles by representatives of AT Internet, Flocktory, Google, Retail Rocket and Yandex, as well as Thierry Cellerin and Bas Godska, two Western marketing experts operating in Moscow.
Mobile revolution yet to come to Russia
Another essential dimension of the new e-commerce landscape is mobile. In Russia, however, mobile commerce is still little developed, with just 20% of the total number of transaction in 2014 and early 2015 vs. up to 50% in the most advanced countries, according to Igor Eremin, CEO of mobile ad network iVengo Mobile.
However, this share is expected to grow considerably in the next few years, due to the already existing massive mobile Internet audience in Russia. Some sites are leading the trend, such as Ozon.ru which launched a mobile commerce app as early as 2010. Now one visitor in four is a mobile user, said Head of Projects Mikhail Osin, who believes this fraction will “double soon.”
As a matter of fact, Ozon’s subsidiary Litres, the leader of the Russian e-book market, saw the majority of its visitors coming from mobile devices as early as May 2014.
Osin revealed that more than 40% of Ozon’s mobile users pre-pay their orders by electronic means – a much higher fraction than in the case of PC users. Adrien Henni, chief editor at East-West Digital News, saw in this figure “one of the very first signals of a potential change in payment practices in Russian online retail,” where cash is still king as far as physical goods as concerned.
The conference also featured the security challenges of e-commerce. Stunning figures were presented by Nicolas Vedrenne, Managing Director Europe of the Merchant Risk Council. According to this international association, online payment fraud accounts in average for 29% of profit in the travel segment and some 11% for physical goods.
Intelligent Emails founder Jean-Stéphane Bagoëe drew online retailers’ attention to the theft of email databases in Russia and offered advice for a better protection.
A variety of possible solutions to address security issues were presented by Yury Namestnikov, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Labs, and Alex Kibkalo, a figure in the international IT security scene.
New technologies for tomorrow’s retail
Last but not least, an important part of the conference was dedicated to technological innovation in online and offline retail.
In the field of logisitics, Matthieu Hallouin of international equipment maker Savoye showed how new packing machines can reduce the size of e-commerce packages by up to 50% or more, and dramatically reduce noise and power consumption as well. Arvato Russia General Manager Michael Poetschke commented on the introduction of innovative approaches in e-commerce logistics as well as the drivers and obstacles to such evolutions.
Delivery processes are another playing field for innovators. Russian startup Delivia presented a solution that allows retailers to coordinate and optimize operations with several delivery services.
Another innovation, presented by Skolkovo resident company Logistics IT, is intended for delivery services to calculate and optimize shipping routes.
The highpoint of the show came when a drone flew into the event venue to deliver a chocolate box to an eDays attendee.
Delivery by drones is at the experimental stage in Russia, explained Oleg Ponfilenok, CEO of Copter Express, although some e-commerce company are already using this method for PR purposes. The current technical, commercial and legal obstacles to large-scale use of drones in this field could be lifted in the middle and long term, believes Ponfilenok.
Innovation is also about business practices. Commenting on the specific conditions of the Russian delivery market, Hermes-DPD Deputy CEO Joseph Saary offered comparison points between Russia and other countries in terms of pricing and transparency. The German businessman unveiled some of his company’s planned initiatives to improve market conditions in these fields.
The speakers’ presentations are available on the event’s website. eDays is a joint project of East-West Digital News, the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce (CCIFR), and marketing agency Buzzfactory.
