Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is known for being a busy man. Recently titled the worst boss in the world, he is having a rocket for space built, amongst other things  and is investing 42 Million dollars in a giant clock in the middle of a mountain in Texas, among other things. He is also having researchers look for the Apollo 11 rocket on the floor of the Atlantic. In his spare time he is restructuring the Washington Post, which he bought with his private fortune.

Obviously the money for all this expensive fun has to come from somewhere. Why else make for face available as a model for crash test dummies?

(found on Golem.de)

In the long run, digital trade is heading towards saturation point. The aging population is spending ever more money on real estate, groceries, mobility and health while young people have to budget with tight resources.

A factor which often goes unnoticed is the complete dissemination of the internet in every age group and class. The proportion of potential new customers sinks with this and is already the customer group with the strongest growth. Once this is tapped, the cake will be divided. Those who wish to grow have to take away a market share from the competition or go international.

New growth drivers are being urgently searched for. There is also more being invested in marketing. SEO and purchased SEA traffic could provide new customers in the short term.

The attraction of the prices could also provide compensation. However, this requires an emotional customer approach, which puts the price in the background. Creating a corresponding trademark and building up trust with it requires lots time and also hides some pitfalls.

Another way is via process optimisation. A sleeker business structure and process chains optimised through big data helps to stay a step ahead of the competition. However, these also cost a lot of time and effort, because business internal structures have to be broken down in most cases and experts in this area are rare.

This excerpt on the future of trade comes from our trend compass Handelskaft 2014, which can be downloaded free of charge from our website (language format: German only). The trend book is also available in high quality print format. Those interested in >>Handelskraft 2014<< or in further information and advice are welcome to contact us!

Steve Jobs was wrong – despite smartphone shopping, PCs are still here. Search and purchase decisions are increasingly happening via mobile. However, conversion via smartphone has not risen significantly. Reasons surely include old habits and a lack of trust in payment finalisation via smartphone. Perhaps a lot of people shop from they workstation while are they are work. “certainly not always to the edification of their bosses.”

Because of the heightened use of mobile end devices, one could think that desk top computers have become unattractive in the mean-time. “Missed by a mile.” Smartphones and tablets complete the shopper’s online search. Up to now, the steady conversion rate has not translated into less time on desktop computers. Mobile devices are deployed more strongly for research, while the purchase is finalised on the desktop computer.

Google has now taken on this new challenge. The customer’s surfer behaviour on different devices is supported to be displayed with “Universal Analytics”. Marketers can spread their campaigns better and address the customer exactly according to their needs. The dotSource-Mobile-Commerce-Whitepaper also goes into detail on how wish lists and other functions can be used to move the customer towards order finalisation.

“Next please!” wants Roman Zenner in the current heated debate on e-commerce innovation, also in relation to shop systems. I just have the feeling that this was also addressed to me. Alexander Ringsdorff, Andi Unger, and Björn Schotte have already taken part. Jochen Krisch deals with this topic regularly.

The community has now focused on the topic of gender in current e-commerce debates. While the topic “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” has lost none of its appeal, a subject seemingly long laid ad acta – the aging population – has been forgotten.

In the read worthy dossier Generation der Babyboomer vs. die Jüngeren (baby boomers vs. the youth) puts this topics back in the spotlight.

This reemerging subject brought me to the question: what could happen in online trade if what was a cone became a mushroom.