On the first Dutch Food & E-commerce congress on June 27th 2017, it was made very clear: e-commerce should definitely put the customer in the center of business strategies in order to survive the upcoming influence of Amazon and other disruptors. What secret was NOT shared? In the panel discussion with Donatello Piras and Frank van Oirschot, SphereMall’s founder Christian van Someren introduced ‘personalized commerce’ as the next innovative trend everyone should embrace.
Innovate or miss out
What’s the accelerator for this opinion? Simple. Amazon took over Whole Foods. This will affect our market more than we can realize today. It’s for sure that if the food and FMCG industry continues to innovate as slowly as it did last decade, they will miss out. Due to the growth of assortments and web shops and poor findability of products, conversion is still marginal. Huge assortments can leave customers feeling overwhelmed. They cannot find what they love, cannot choose or end up with the wrong products. Let’s get real: e-commerce is in need of customer-focused innovation more than ever. Innovation has to come from within the industry first before the outside world can benefit. That’s what Amazon is really good at: innovate from within and therefore act swiftly on the market. It was remarkable that no attendee suggested personalization as the right angle to come to long-term solutions.
Elephant in the room
Quit segmentation. Start personalization. Christian van Someren talked about why the industry should go beyond persona’s if the industry truly wants to accomplish customer centricity and increase conversion. Personalization is the ONLY smart solution how to transit to true innovation. We have a huge elephant in the room. Why? Simply because we look around but do not see which beautiful solution lies in front of us. The call for personalization is not being recognized yet. Because the definition, as well as the true meaning of personalization, is in the dark since we’re only familiar with current solutions and ways of personalization such as segmentation, name-dropping in newsletters and eye-candy like color use. These tools and tricks simply do not help to make products better findable in the long-term. Not because they are technically inconvenient, but because they fail in their approach. Like fragments of the ultimate all in one solution. This inspired SphereMall to think the other way: not to focus on the system but to focus on the consumer from start to finish. To put them in control, straight into the driving seat of sharing personal information that enables to connect a single person with products that match their individual preferences. Not because others with similar interests bought it. Everyone wants happy, returning customers in the end and add value for lifetime. Personalization is 100% key in this. SphereMall’s technology is built to get acquainted with each individual customers, learns what someone likes, protects that person from irrelevant products and helps to find surprisingly perfect options. With the SphereMall technology, the industry can achieve a smoother customer journey, a personalized shopping experience, and a higher conversion.
Food for thought
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This article is inspired by the first Food & E-commerce congress that took place on June 27th 2017 in the Netherlands where the founder of SphereMall, Christian van Someren, was the participant of the panel discussion with chairman Donatello Piras and co-member Frank van Oirschot about lessons learned out of former entrepreneurship truus.nl and smaak.nl. Are you curious about more? Share this message and follow us.
