Where are the New Growth Drivers in Trade?

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!