The only constant in commerce is change
Businesses have dealt with more change over the last two years than in the previous two decades and it is no different for exhibitions. Our partners at Shopify have published their report “The Future of Commerce” which highlights the continuing evolution of consumer buying habits and offers some thoughts on where these go next.
One key feaute of the rapid growth in ecommerce has been the rapid increase in customer acquisition costs. It’s an area that exhibitions are fantastically well positioned to support exhibitors in, providing an ongoing community of interested parties looking for new introductions, engagement and buying opportunities.
“As the world has moved online and as commerce has had its second renaissance, the side effect is that customer acquisition costs have risen to enormous levels. The clear solution for brands is to increase their repeat rates and increase customer lifetime value.”
The big feature of 2022 is “omnichannel commerce” and again this is particularly relevent to those of us in events and exhibitions. In-person shopping is ramping up again. But it’s not about one or the other—consumers want it all. The best brands understand that digital and physical retail don’t operate as silos. It’s all just retail. Your customers want to be able to order online but return in store, or look at a product in a showroom and buy it online.
Over the next year, 54% of the consumers surveyed say they’re likely to look at a product online and buy in store, and 53% are likely to look at a product in-person and buy online. As the organiser of an event, we are uniquely positioned to be able to offer both sides of this, the in-person live event with all the great benefits that brings to both exhibitors and visitors, supported by an online marketplace that enables visitors to purchase directly from your exhibitors 365 days of the year.
There were some other interesting takeaways from the report – social commerce sales are set to nearly triple by 2025, and 40% of consumers say they plan to pay with cryptocurrency in the next year! We will come back to these in a future blog but if one thing is clear, the speed of change is commerce shows no signs of slowing down.
You can read the full Shopify report by clicking here.
