Dubai: Mobile and social media will be massive for the foreseeable future and will further complement the development of e-commerce, which is also here to stay, an industry expert said.
Brian McBride, chairman of Asos.com and Wiggle.com, and formerly managing director of Amazon in the UK, said the best online players know their customers what they like.
They also know how to engage with them better than brick-and-mortar stores, he told Gulf News, speaking on the sidelines of the Cards and Payments Middle East 2016.
Asos is an internet-based fashion retailer and has grown to become on of the UK’s biggest multibrand fashion sites with operations in Europe, Australia and the US.
McBride said, in the early days of e-commerce, the focus was all about the internet and computers. Years ago, nobody knew about e-commerce.
According to research firm A.T. Kearny, the value of the e-commerce market in the Gulf Cooperation Council rose from $3.3 billion in 2010 to $15 billion in 2015.
But PayFort stats show the e-commerce value in the Arab world will grow to $13.4 billion by 2020 from $7 billion in 2014.
“There are two very important trends and they very much interrelate — mobile and social media. The advent of Apple’s iPhone and the huge growth of smartphones (around 1.4 billion devices) have really affected many e-commerce websites,” he said.
Right now At Asos, about 49 per cent of e-commerce deals are done on mobile phones, 12 per cent on tablets and the rest on PCs.
He said that 49 per cent of customers search for products on Amazon verses 11 per cent on Goggle. Social media is changing very rapidly and ‘engagement marketing’ is a key tool for e-retailers.
Facebook’s mobile site has more than 1.5 billion people using it, and in addition there are apps like WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest, Wanelo and Instagram.
“They need to understand the devices and more importantly, usage and social media implications. E-commerce companies have to be big on social media, which is why we have a huge team that looks out for stories about celebrities and their styles and outfits,” he said.
Consumers like to share with their friends what they are looking at and they don’t trust the media, politicians or advertisements, he said, and added that 78 per cent of the consumers trust their friends while only 14 per cent trust adverts.
“The internet is where millennials want to buy their products, so the e-commerce site has to be developed for mobile and serving more apps to your customers to make it easier to access your site through their mobile,” he said.
When asked whether brick and mortar stores will disappear due to the growth in online, he said offline stores will not disappear but their market share will decrease.
To be in the retail industry today, he said, the retailer does not have to be an Amazon to survive, he just has to be better than the store next door.
