Zara turns on e-commerce: why is it important to focus your business on digital?
Zara, one of the giants of the Inditex group, in the last month has started an extraordinary change: it invested 1 billion on e-commerce with the goal to reach 25% of its turnover from online sales by 2022. The company started last year to rethink the business model and their marketing strategy towards a more digital orientation; however, the need to deal with post-Covid19 period has accelerated everything.
How consumer habits have changed
It is expected that the sudden, although forced, changes in consumption habits due to the lockdown will be long-lasting.
A survey published by Bilendi in February 2020 showed that in the Italian online market 80% of consumers make, on average, at least one purchase per month. In particular, the results revealed the following consumption habits:
– 20% intensive purchase (at least one purchase per week),
– 80% habitual purchase (at least one purchase per month)
– 20% sporadic purchase (one purchase every quarter or less).
Owning a personal e-commerce, therefore, certainly represents a great competitive advantage over the competitors.
Why is it important to have an e-commerce?
The e-commerce provides important advantages to the entrepreneur: first of all it expand the reference market, not having any geographical boundaries due to the physical store; moreover, the virtual store can be opened at any time: ideally you can sell to anyone, anywhere in the world and at any time, increasing profits. The management costs are greatly reduced, thus guaranteeing to the final customer a lower purchase price than the one offered in the physical store; for example intangible goods such as films, music, videogames or newspapers are now increasingly purchased in digital version through a simple download. Finally, through the possibility of analysing the available data – number of visits to the site, length of stay, purchase data of each user – you can understand your customers’ needs better, guaranteeing a great personalized user experience.
However, even today, opening an online sales channel finds the resistance of many, especially among small entrepreneurs; the high management costs, the customer care service, the logistics and the updating of the catalogue leads many to give up such a deeply advantageous tool.