Is Amazon coming to Stockholm?

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Is Amazon coming to Stockholm?.

With new entrants gobbling up the retail digital market share while traditional chains struggle online, The Retail Hive’s latest interactive program explored ways to exploit digital and data to engage the connected customer – and asked how Amazon or other major online players could impact the retail sector in Stockholm. 

Speaking to over 80 senior retail professionals at the Retail Hive Live: Exploiting Digital & Data to Engage the Connected Customer, which took place in Stockholm; Chairman, Will Lockie, Global Head of eCommerce at George Jensen, said: “Has eCommerce in the UK died as a result of Amazon? Not at all – but it has altered the landscape, and eCommerce specialists are winning the race over other retailers.”

The meeting brought European retail leaders from brands such as Adidas, Bootzt, Sephora, Pierce AB, Samsøe & Samsø, Unilever, The Walt Disney Company and Zalando together at The Brewery Conference Center on 6th November to take part in a selection of carefully curated roundtable discussions. The aim? To learn from those online specialists, and one another, how to use data and digital innovation to their advantage.

Madeleine Munkhammar, Head of Sales at Nelly.com summed up the importance of utilising data by saying; “If you don’t know the facts and data, you are just another person with an opinion.”

Key takeaways from the roundtable discussions include:

• AI is helping to shape a hyper relevant customer journey; by doing the job of both manual and automated merchandising with a single system throughout the customer journey.
• Don’t lose the human touch when it comes to creating a loyalty strategy. Technology and data cannot think and empathise like humans. The ability to put yourself in your customers’ shoes based on reliable data will help guide the creation of a frictionless and intuitive experience.
• Understand customer expectations before developing delivery innovation. The customer should always be your starting point: build your strategy around them.
• Marketplaces are discovery channels for brands. Find the routes that are relevant to your brand to engage with and recruit new customers. Relevant data and a good price can only take you so far, investing in marketing services puts you one step ahead of competition.
• Understand how to make data-driven decisions; Be able to differentiate between data that can help shape strategic decisions and data that is essential for everyday business.
• Content has impact; engaging content provides the building blocks for brands online. Retailers are working with agencies and in-house departments to devise strategies – some have even bought content companies and integrated them into the marketing department.