Global E-Commerce Summit

Launched six years ago, the Global E-Commerce Summit is the leading international event that focuses on the most important trends and developments in global e-commerce, cross-border trading and omnichannel retail. After editions in Amsterdam and Monaco, the event settled on Barcelona, which has now been the home of the summit and the awards ceremony for the last four years.

Three days with inspiring key notes, market insights, business strategies, useful business cases, networking possibilities (like the Global E-commerce Party) and of course the fourth edition of the European E-commerce Award ceremony.

In 2014 the theme will be The Next E-Commerce Revolution: No Borders, No Channels.

Retail is going through its next revolution and it is the customers who are dictating its pace. Seeking instant satisfaction, connected shoppers switch devices, maintain presence on multiple channels simultaneously and are ready to buy in any country. Retailers need to get ready to seamlessly serve this new generation of customers, breaking down barriers and demonstrating their agility in the breathtaking dynamics of this new era.

The Global E-Commerce Summit is the leading international event focusing on the most important trends and developments in global e-commerce, cross-border trade and omnichannel retail.

Global retail
The world is getting smaller all the time and borders are increasingly blurring. This presents various opportunities for retailers to reach potential customers. Expanding sales to foreign countries is an excellent means by which saturation in the home market can be compensated. At the same time, the prospect of entering a new market can be frightening. In order to be successful in global retailing, vendors therefore need to establish which markets are suitable for them and develop a individually tailored strategy accordingly. During the breakout sessions, highly experienced global retailers will provide insights regarding their strategies and share their success stories and pitfalls. How did they broach foreign markets? How did they develop a ‘plan de campagne’ and which obstacles did they face?

Omnichannel retail
Multi-,cross- and omni-channel: retailers still selling only via one single channel are unlikely to prevail. But how to design a good cross-channel strategy? What does the effort involved in omni channel – being ever-present everywhere – demand of your organisation? Which choices will you be confronted with and what types of employee, with which set of skills, will you need to ensure success? Leading retailers share their experiences and give practical tips.

Mobile retailing/Tablet commerce
The influence of smartphones on shopping is far greater than its share of sales turnover suggests. The mobile phone plays a vital role at many points along the customer journey. M-Commerce is not only about selling, it is also about accompanying the customer throughout his or her buying process, irrespective of which channel is chosen. On the other hand, tablets are increasingly replacing desktop PCs and are therefore an increasingly important means of actually finalising purchases. How do you develop a mobile strategy? How do your customers make use of their smartphones and are they tablet savvy?Retailers who have given mobile phones a central role in their cross channel strategy will speak about their experiences. What problems did they encounter during the development process? Why did they choose a mobile website or an app? Which choices did they make when developing a website or app for a tablet platform?

Social commerce
Social commerce can be described as helping people to shop where they socialise and socialise where they shop. That implies that commerce can be social whether it starts on an e-commerce website and results in the share of a product purchase on social networks or starts inside social media and results in a sale on an e-commerce site. Or it may start inside a social media space and remain there. Although some brands over the years have been skeptical about how social media can bring in revenue, research from Gartner reveals that by 2015 social commerce sales are expected to bring in 30 billion dollars annually, with half of all web sales occurring via social media.

So what do you do with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn or Polyvore? It’s difficult isn’t it? Luckily, there are some retailers who already successfully make use of social commerce. During these ‘strategies, learning and tips’ breakout sessions, they will share with us what social commerce means for their business and for which sectors social commerce is of greatest value and for which it is not.

Logistics
Consumers have high expectations when it comes to online shopping. They want to know exactly when they can expect their parcel, and if they do not like what is inside, they want to be able to return it easily. That has a considerable impact on the management of a shop. Especially for retailers who sell via numerous sales channels, logistics can be a delicate issue. How can you arrange logistics as efficiently as possible while remaining focused on the customer’s preferences? What can you handle in-house and what would be wiser to outsource? In which cases is it better to entrust the whole process to an external
provider?This breakout session provides tips, tricks and learning that cover everything about balanced logistics strategies.

Online marketing strategy & tactics
Consumers are increasingly raising their voices on social media: companies and products are elaborately discussed on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, wikis and forums. This relentless activity offers new opportunities for marketers. An organisation that knows how to engage customers at the right moment will create motivated ambassadors. But what is the right way? During this breakout session, you will learn about the ins and outs of SEO, SEA, affiliate marketing, content marketing and branded content.

The future of retail
Digital is changing the way brands and marketers communicate with consumers; thus it can be difficult to keep up with trends. What’s hot today could be cold tomorrow. New business models are changing the online retail game in profound ways. Never before have your customers been able to contribute so directly to your company’s product design, marketing, and sales efforts – if you know how to tap into them, that is. This session will cover everything to do with communities and crowdsourcing, how IT and marketing are teaming up more closely together to help define a new tomorrow for retailers, Everywhere Commerce, The Wide Open Graph, Big Data and other important emerging digital trends that will impact brands and marketers in 2013 and beyond.

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