Warning that the annual growth rate in retail e-commerce sales could slow down over the next several years, Gary Briggs, chief marketing officer at eBay Inc., told attendees at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in San Jose, CA, that retailers need to take advantage of high-speed bandwidth to provide innovative shopping experiences.
“We underestimate the impact that bandwidth has on the way customers shop,” Briggs said. “But I don’t think we’re innovating enough.”
Briggs said that too many online retailers try to copy one another’s best and most popular features such as free shipping. “But sameness doesn’t generate consumer demand,” he said. “We’re at risk of letting sameness make our industry mature more quickly.”
EBay is trying to reverse this trend by engaging its customers to get their direct input on how they like to shop, Briggs says. Under one program 500 eBay employees regularly receive e-mail messages from customers about what they think is working or not working on eBay.com.
To cater to a growing interest in mobile commerce, eBay customers can use their mobile devices to visit a wireless-capable shopping site, select a product and then pay with their PayPal account. PayPal is a payments unit of eBay.
Innovation is the best way to keep growth rates strong in retail e-commerce, Briggs said. “We can change the growth rates in this industry, and see the industry grow faster than we’re estimating it to grow today.”
Briggs cited figures from JupiterResearch that estimate that the growth rate of annual e-commerce sales could slow to 8% in 2011 from 16% this year. But other research puts the current growth rate closer to 25% for 2007.
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