From the production and distribution of food products, including niche products, to the personalization of the online shopping experience based on consumer data, global food ecommerce promises to redefine the way companies interact with their customers and operate in the international market, not just for B2C. The numbers speak for themselves, B2B online sales are growing 8 times faster than offline sales.
On February 22-23, power2Cloud participated for the first time with BigCommerce in the Ecommerce Food Conference. Now in its third edition, the event again offered a collected and vertical meeting on online sales in the food market, dedicated to professional distributors, retailers, manufacturers and private labels.
Although the opportunities and the time seem ripe, from the stage of the event it was necessary to reiterate several times that offline does not disrupt online, on the contrary, it allows to offer a personalized brand experience and to develop new products, welcoming an increasing share of B2B users, accustomed to the UX of B2C.
"In 2027, the global Food & Beverage ecommerce market will be worth $140.42 billion" (source: BigCommerce). We are talking about a catalyst of unprecedented opportunities that many have yet to seize. Expanding and diversifying one's market, reaching global consumers through sales platforms will not be enough, one must also think about new ways of marketing, distribution and production innovation.
Working on the customer journey is and must become an ongoing activity, one that must continue to be challenged with the support of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) andreview analytics, while continuing to offer increasingly in-demand services such as pre-orders, subscriptions, personalization and dedicated pricing, especially from mobile.
5 Food eCommerce trends to continue to grow in the coming years
Some of the focuses of the eCommerce Food agenda turned the spotlight on B2C and B2B ecommerce strategies, internationalization, digital marketplaces, software and technology solutions, as well as fresh food logistics, advertising, food delivery, packaging, local commerce, loyalty, live shopping, payments and more.
Among the five trends that shape and will continue to shape food eCommerce and profits here's what you must not overlook:
- sustainability continues to be anything but a marginal detail. In 2024, consumers intend to buy more sustainable products, starting with packaging. It is no coincidence that some European food commerce players have started showing as the first category whether the product is "organic, eco and fair trade," assigning a nutritional score to increase transparency and consumer information, or allowing products to be filtered by sustainability criteria;
- the ecosystem becomes more complex with the entry of new players in food ecommerce in Europe as well, includingdirect-to-consumer food (DTC) players. Different types of offerings such as breadth of assortment and speed of delivery are offered to so many consumer segments that they fragment into these different models. Downward pressure has fostered alliances and aggregations of different players, partnerships, financial investments, joint ventures, and integrations have emerged to create profit;
- retail media as a profit center. Data say will reach 10-15% of total ad spend in 2024;
- The quest for profitable online growth is through 5 macro investment areas:
- ecommerce Revenue Growth Management, with advanced price-promo-assortment logic based on Advanced Analytics to define online vs offline differentiation;
- Cost Efficiency, with review and optimization of procurement, marketing, logistics costs also leveraging automation;
- delivery optimization by differentiating prices and delivery methods of online orders;
- retail media as a profit center;
- data and artificial intelligence to deeply understand sales data to improve service and operational data to make operations efficient.
The perfect recipe: what is replatforming fee and why choose composable eCommerce?
During their speech on the eCommerce Food stage and during comparisons at booth B13 at the event, they proposed the perfect recipe for a solid, durable, simple, integrated and composable ecommerce. To the choice of the right technology stack that of a partner who can accompany the correct software selection, integrate strategies, processes and tools through an experience-centric approach.
The technological ecosystem of an eCommerce is not only that of the platform dedicated to sales, but it is the set of solutions, each vertical in its domain, dedicated, for example, to invoicing, catalog, warehouse, CRM. Separating them is definitely the first thing to do. That is why there is so much talk about composable eCommerce.
A system that wants to do everything soon becomes slow, cumbersome and complex to manage. Not only does this approach relieve brands of the burden of starting over, but it allows them to reduce management costs, process changes and retraining, so they can focus on the only thing that matters in business, selling! Do you agree?
Another important issue that many people experience, but is still little talked about, is the replatforming tax.
"Let's be clear," comments Domenico La Tosa, Senior Solution Engineer at BigCommerce, "it's not a real tax, but you can't overlook the fact that brands find themselves every 3-4 years, if it goes well, with objective constraints that block business development, because the eCommerce platform shows its limitations and cannot meet all needs.
An Open SaaS platform like BigCommerce grows with the business, becomes performant over the years, without forcing brands into a new vendor selection, the cost of replatforming and all that goes with it."
Personalization, loyalty and engagement as a competitive advantage
So says data and research that BigCommerce followed up in late 2023 with PayPal and WBR Insight.
The interview of senior eCommerce figures in Europe showed that they are focusing on three main aspects: personalization through AI, mobile check out, and digital wallet (85 percent of respondents reported an increase among consumers in the last two years).
To ensure a competitive advantage," Enrica then concluded, "companies must continue to work on personalization, loyalty and engagement!
Want to learn more? Write us to get started on your food eCommerce with power2Cloud and BigCommerce.