The most important e-commerce trends at a glance

Summary: The discussion revolves around the most important e-commerce trends, but no details or specific trends were provided in the conversation. Neither podcast@ebay nor joey19610 made any substantive contributions.

“What will 2023 bring us?” This question is currently on many retailers’ minds. For this reason, we invited retail expert, coach, speaker, and author Frank Rehme, who is certainly familiar to some listeners through his own podcast “The Future of Shopping.” With him, we talk about current e-commerce trends and clarify which topics retailers should tackle in order to start the coming year well prepared.

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Isabell: Hello dear listeners and welcome to our new podcast episode for our retailers and of course for everyone who wants to become one. It’s hard to believe, but 2022 is already drawing to a close again. And now not only are all the New Year’s resolutions coming back up, but everything is also revolving around the question: What will 2023 actually bring us? And of course, this is one of the most frequently asked questions right now, especially in e-commerce.

David: Yes, and exactly for that reason we’ve invited a special guest today. And that is someone who knows the subject inside out and can simply prepare us for the current and upcoming e-commerce trends: Frank Rheme, retail expert, coach, speaker, and author. Hi Frank!

Frank: Hi, greetings to you all.

Tino: Yes, hello Frank. But before we dive deeper into the whole topic, we’d like to learn a bit more about you first. Tell us how you became a retail expert and what keeps you busy all day long.

Frank: Oh yes, well, it’s actually a long story. I don’t want to bore you with it. I used to head the innovation area at METRO, and we were already intensely focused on the topic of the “future of retail” back in 2003/2004. We built Future Stores here. The first opened in Rheinberg in 2003, at the time by Claudia Schiffer, the second in Tönisvorst in 2008. I then left METRO in 2013 because METRO suddenly had different plans in this area, and I founded a company. It’s called “gmvteam,” and “gmv” stands for “common sense.” A short time later I also founded the channel “zukunftdeseinkaufens.de” together with Heike Scholz and Karin Wunderlich, where we said we finally needed to create a blog that deals with innovation at the POS, i.e. in brick-and-mortar retail. And in the meantime, it has become very, very successful in terms of reach. Since 2019, I’ve also been heading the “Kompetenzzentrum Handel” of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, now called “Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Handel,” where we address the issue of digitalization in owner-managed mid-sized businesses — which shouldn’t be underestimated; there are well over a quarter of a million retailers in Germany, who are extremely important for city centers and make up a large part of the revitalization of city centers, of course. Yes, and that’s basically my field of work. And I’m looking forward to talking with you today about the topics of the future.

Isabell: That was definitely a colorful bouquet of activities. Thanks for sharing all of that with us. As a retail expert, I really liked that term. You probably deal a lot with trends and give companies guidance on how they can respond to trends. Would you like to tell us a bit more about that?

Frank: Yes, of course. That’s also why the name gmvteam, common sense. I focus on things that are immediately applicable, but also immediately successful. So of course, behind the scenes we work on topics like NFTs, the metaverse, AI. We’re currently building a top cluster for AI in retail together with Fraunhofer in North Rhine-Westphalia. So that’s where we’re active. But when I talk to retailers themselves, I always try to meet them exactly where they currently have their pain points or where the big tasks are that lie ahead right now. Winter will bring particular challenges, and it’s about bringing practical solutions there accordingly, so we can help them quickly, also in that area. That means we always have to keep the big picture in mind. But then we also have to make sure we have measures that, in small steps, will eventually get us to that big picture.

Tino: Yes, very exciting. Definitely “gmv.” I’ve already remembered that, I think it’s really good, common sense. But before we get to web3 and metaverse and all that later on, how do you see it? If you look at companies, do you maybe have tips for our retailers on which levers and workflows in a company could perhaps be optimized? What should you pay close attention to when running a business?

Frank: Basically, for all companies it’s always about conversion, i.e. getting enough customers to notice you and then, of course, buy from you at some point. In the past, in brick-and-mortar retail, we implemented many things that we had copied from e-commerce: How do I get customer data? How do I then deal with customers properly? And in my opinion, the message to companies that do e-commerce is now very much to take a look at a few things from brick-and-mortar retail that have always made a big difference. We’re now reaching a point where you can see that a saturation curve is ultimately also arriving in e-commerce. In small steps, yes, but it is arriving. And the second thing is, actually we didn’t want to talk about this, but we have to talk about it: the impact of the crises we’re dealing with now. We’re currently seeing the latest figures from the trade association and the Institute for Retail Research showing that the topic of reluctance to buy is currently trending very, very strongly among consumers. And that’s where we are. We have to think about it: on the one hand we now have increased costs — the minimum wage has been raised, I suddenly have high energy costs as a company — and on the other hand revenue weakness due to reluctance to buy. So as an online retailer I have to think about how I can respond to that. And what I need to do is actually what brick-and-mortar retail has always done: storytelling. I can’t just offer products on their own and hope to achieve conversion through price accordingly. Nowadays I need to deliver a bit more than that. And that’s this whole storytelling around products that I need to do myself. That means I’m always very happy to talk about this. I have to create contexts, sell contexts. I can, as I always say, buy the famous pound of coffee for 3.99 euros at the discount store. But also for 60 euros it’s “more money for same value.” Nothing about the product itself has changed, but it’s somehow compressed into little capsules. George Clooney advertises it and suddenly I’m willing to pay more for it. And as an online retailer, I now have to develop exactly these contexts accordingly and also incorporate them into my online shop.

Tino: In our preliminary conversation, you briefly mentioned a corporate pyramid and the basics. Would you perhaps like to go into that briefly again?

Frank: Exactly. Good that you brought that up again and reminded me. It’s about the following: at some point, because in the “Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Handel” we are of course very focused on digitalization, especially among SMEs, we asked ourselves: what is actually the right sequence for approaching digitalization? And we have so often found that many retailers were extremely disappointed when they went into local online marketplaces or similar platforms, which exploded during the crisis without end and where they suddenly really, I’d say, failed because they also lacked digital basics. We all know this super topic: if you don’t have an inventory management system, and really 30/40% of small retailers don’t have one. And if I send them to such an online marketplace, they will have very negative experiences because, all of a sudden, the whole issue of real-time stock management and so on simply doesn’t work, and that’s where disappointment suddenly arises. And then they complain about the marketplace, they complain about the internet in general, and they’d rather have stayed with our brick-and-mortar business. That’s why we developed this digitalization pyramid. We can also link it in the show notes here. It’s about saying, okay, let’s start with the basics: inventory management, POS system, having a clean solution in place. Then customer information systems, where I can collect and also process customer data accordingly. Then the focus shifts outward, so that I have a proper Google My Business listing and also a clean website that maybe later leads to an online shop. Then I have to do social media work. If I’m not seen, I won’t be bought from. That applies to online retailers just as much as to brick-and-mortar retailers. And then of course, if I want to sell on the internet too, there’s the marketplace topic, my own online shop, right through to livestream shopping and all those things. And all of that is described in this digitalization pyramid. Also how I activate it, with newsletters, contests, and tours, theme tours that I can do digitally, and all those things. That’s basically the experience that has gone into it from many, many projects.

David: I find that very nice because it applies both to brick-and-mortar retailers and to e-commerce retailers that you simply have to have the basics clear before you can really grow big. And I think it’s very, very valuable to just be aware of that. Okay, what should I pay attention to first? What are the steps that make sense to go through one after the other? That’s why I’m very happy that we can also link this pyramid and that we can give a bit of guidance there. You mentioned earlier the whole topic of crisis and what effects are now coming very quickly. We originally wanted to give an outlook for next year, but let’s stay with this year for just a moment. eBay itself also did a survey with YouGov and found that many people want to save first for the Christmas business, so this reluctance to buy is really very, very strong. For example, the result was that 44% of Germans say they will save more this Christmas than before. So even last year, when we had already been saving a bit after the pandemic, and 20% of gift-givers even want to set a fixed budget for the first time. Before we move on to next year, can you briefly say what retail should perhaps prepare for this year so that expectations aren’t too high?

Frank: Competition will naturally get bigger in that situation when the pie of distributable budget gets smaller. Then, as a retailer, I naturally have to come up with something to get a share of that pie. And that’s where it comes back to what I just explained. I have to think about the fact that it’s no longer enough to simply put products online and attach a great price to them. And I can go so far into a price war that I end up not making any money at all. Then my business purpose is not fulfilled. Instead, I have to think about how I can make my product more attractive than my competitor’s products, with the competitor being just one click away. And that’s where it comes back to these contexts. That’s what I first have to set myself as a task as a retailer. How do I enter this battle? Just because I imagine something now doesn’t mean the market will get bigger; on the contrary, it shrinks, as you just rightly said. And it shrinks especially among very young people. The IFH did this survey among people under 25, who are actually supposed to be the future, one has to say, they don’t need to worry about jobs. We have a labor shortage; they’re actually going into a good future, economically speaking at least. And what it ultimately comes down to is that they are the ones with the greatest fear. That means the very people who are supposed to own the world are actually seeing the biggest problems ahead of them, and as a retailer, that has to be in your mind: I need to activate these people in a very special and different way. And that brings us to a topic we retailers sometimes like to ignore. This whole topic of customer segmentation. Back then, there used to be customer segmentation like academics, 40, two children, lives in the suburbs of a city, dual-income, and so on. Those are all things that don’t matter anymore today. I have to think about customer segmentation completely differently. We no longer have 20/30 segments like before; nowadays we have almost 84 million customer segments, because everyone is individual and we all act out of a motivation. And we need to recognize these motives. There are wonderful developments here from Professor Häusel, who once developed this “limbic map,” where I can see how I actually set the right triggers to sell things to customers accordingly. And online retailers will also have to deal with such topics in the future in order to understand how I ultimately get my products to women and men.

Isabell: And what can I concretely do as an online retailer to get a better feel for my segment and then adapt my online presence accordingly?

Frank: Exactly there, it’s about delivering more than just the product — the contexts I just talked about. If I think about which target group they are also for, I create personas to figure out what the needs of the people buying these products actually are, and then address those needs much, much more accordingly. That means completely different images, completely different article texts that I have to convey nowadays. Those standard stories won’t cut it in the future. And that’s what brick-and-mortar retailers should actually always do, too, based on the past. Someone walks into the store and a good salesperson immediately gets a feeling for it. How price-sensitive are they and how do I, as Atze Schröder always said, need to know where people’s buttons are. I have to press the right buttons on people. That’s called customer activation, and it has to be reflected digitally. And good retailers are already doing that very well. We’re talking about dynamic pricing systems, which all the big online retailers already have integrated. But that’s initially limited to price. What it really comes down to is that we have target-group-oriented product descriptions that also address people’s needs. For example: if I’m a retailer dealing with, say, electrical engineering, then I’m exactly the one who now tries to get these energy cost measuring devices to women and men in the right way, with the right texts behind them, explaining what I gain from buying such a thing. The electricity bill must not go through the roof, and here you get direct information about how this thing makes your life better by reducing energy consumption and thereby freeing up resources for other forms of consumption.

David: I think the next step in this is, if you already have an established social media presence, to play that there as well and then send people to the store or to the eBay shop, right?

Frank: Absolutely. It’s about going there and reaching exactly those people, and social media is of course the best way to do that. But then it must not break off at the online shop all of a sudden.

David: It has to continue seamlessly.

Frank: Exactly! And that’s what the heart of omnichannel is about: that this topic is truly continued consistently in the online shop as well.

Tino: I’m also thinking right now of the podcast episode about social media, where the entrepreneur practically marries the customer via social media. That was actually a very nice episode too.

David: Frank, let’s move on to the actual topic of the podcast now, which is to take a bit of a look at 2023. Which trends can our retailers expect there? What do you think is coming our way?

Frank: Yes, it actually has a lot to do with what we’ve discussed so far. I need to explain products to people very, very differently. And right now I’m seeing a trend that’s already hugely widespread in China, but for different reasons, because they didn’t always have the infrastructure of brick-and-mortar stores in the same way. The whole topic of live streaming. People should really think about whether they want to do this. We’ve supported many retailers in doing it, and the investment is really peanuts. So it’s about buying a decent ring light. Basically everyone should have a smartphone, and then you can get started. And just try out how this whole livestream thing works, of course.

David: So you mean selling via livestream?

Frank: Exactly right. You go on social media, announce it properly, you really need to do good promotion for it, and with the first, second, and third livestream you’ll definitely be disappointed by how many people are in there. But the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth — that’s when you see the numbers go up. That’s how we’ve always experienced it so far, and it’s really about impulse-buy products; I wouldn’t really see it that way for destination products. Let’s say a muffler for an Audi A4: you don’t sell that via livestream. It’s broken, it needs to be replaced. And then people look for who offers the cheapest product around. Instead, it’s really about presenting things in the fashion area or especially in the hobby area, where it’s about hobby topics, and at the same time explaining what makes them special — and the interaction is the advantage. This isn’t classic QVC teleshopping; it’s about having direct interaction with the viewers, who then write in the chat: Can you show it from the back? Or how do I iron the whole thing? And all that. That has worked wonderfully now. I can also provide a few links afterwards to retailers in my opinion who do this really well, and then you can take a few things from them. That’s what it’s about. I have to activate people differently than I have so far. The second thing is of course, if I’m an online retailer, to make use of the possibilities that will now open up in the future and make customers aware of my offering via social media. And this is the topic that is now wonderfully running with AI support. We did another implementation project with a retailer in the Eifel region, where we had a small company involved, a startup, that has now also really taken off. They simply linked the inventory management system, mixed in data from the web via artificial intelligence, and then turned that into social media posts. That means the retailer suddenly had the whole issue of social media posting — which they don’t like to do, because they’re simply not entertainers — fully automated. Up to the point where frame ads were suddenly also appearing on smart TVs, including for the online shop. And of course that’s interesting. When you do things like that, it’s also possible with a really manageable budget. Otherwise, we all know how expensive it has become to get to the very top of Google rankings. The spending required now is enormous, and I have to look for other attention anchors accordingly. And that is the task every online retailer basically has for next year.

Isabell: I find that really exciting. A few months ago we also had a guest with us, and we talked about trends we can copy from China in Germany. And that gamification factor was especially big there. So it’s exciting that you’re really highlighting that as a trend for next year. What platforms should retailers focus on then?

Frank: Go where the people are. Instagram is very much at the forefront now, and when you look at TikTok, how that thing is exploding. We also test there, you can find me under “retail_doc.” There I also talk about retail trends and stories like that. Just to learn how this medium works. And there we can see especially how much people are being conditioned to this whole video topic. Instagram started as a photo platform. Facebook at the time was much more about simple written posts. Then Instagram came with photos. Nowadays, without video, you can’t even really get started anymore. And it’s also become very easy for retailers to enter this area. That means that as a retailer, in the future I have the task not of outsourcing marketing somewhere, but in some cases also doing it myself. Depending on the size, of course. And the possibilities are actually greater than ever now to reach people, because through social media and reach, you get much, much faster access than was ever the case before. And if we look at all the other advertising options like print and so on, I think we don’t even need to discuss that anymore; that’s over and done with.

David: Would you say, in light of the fact that live shopping, i.e. livestream shopping, and social media are becoming more and more important, that the person behind the business should simply be shown more, making it more human? Because in the end, we all buy from people, right?

Frank: I always recommend going to “fraeuleinmodeundwohnen” written as one word on Instagram. There you’ll find dear Simona Libner, the owner. She’s a career changer; she didn’t come from retail at all, she came from public administration and so on. And she’s now the face of her stores. She has three stores and an online shop and does a lot through livestream shopping as well. And she’s become a bit of a celebrity now. And that’s also what it’s about, this whole topic of being an influencer for yourself, of standing for something. Because we all know this issue of trust, how important it is. And people trust people, not media or institutions, but the person who stands there saying: Here, I’ve picked out this or that blouse for you. That’s what’s going to be trending this year. And then customers are very, very quick to come along.

Tino: Earlier you said that online retailers should take a leaf out of brick-and-mortar retail’s book. How do you actually assess the future of brick-and-mortar retail? And the shopping experience in city centers?

Frank: Great topic. I’m currently working very intensively on that too. We recently founded another company that deals only with the topic of “revitalization of city centers,” because that is not to be underestimated for our quality of life. You can hear it in my slang, I’m basically a Ruhrpott guy. Sure, I come from the deepest Ruhr area, only living in Düsseldorf for the past 15 years. And if you look at the cities in the Ruhr area, the city centers, it almost brings tears to your eyes. Centro Oberhausen opened there 25 years ago and sucked the purchasing power out of all the surrounding city centers. And who wants to live in a city today — you always have to ask yourself that question — that no longer has a lively city center? That is practically also a criterion for companies when choosing a location. We need to be clear about that. You bring someone in for a job interview, they say everything’s great, salary and all that. And then afterward they go into the city center again to see where their future place of living is. And if it’s not reasonably vibrant, then suddenly we also have a location problem. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s what I’m working on. And now, to come back to your question, we always have to look at two things. Of course, especially in the whole e-commerce bubble, people keep talking about brick-and-mortar retail being dead. If I look at the figures published for 2021, we’re talking about a good 590 billion euros in total retail sales. And that included a lot of lockdown effects. With the closure of gastronomy in city centers, which was practically also a lockdown for retail, nobody came anymore. And of those 590 billion, 87 billion were e-commerce. That means the majority is still generated in brick-and-mortar retail. And now one can say, wait a minute, if that’s the case, why do we then have vacancies in city centers and more and more vacancies? And here lies the big problem: we have formats in city centers that no longer excite people. These are 90s, 80s formats with assortments that are really a bit out of date, and of course, due to labor shortages and so on, there’s no one on site who can really activate people properly nowadays. And that’s why we get these vacancies. But that means that if a retailer follows a few really good recipes in brick-and-mortar retail, they can practically no longer stop themselves from being successful. I keep seeing that with the formats that follow all these recipes exactly. We could even do our own episode on that. But brick-and-mortar retail is not really our core topic here. But that’s what it ultimately comes down to. And they have a completely different problem: containing their growth because they simply can’t get the people they need for it.

Isabell: At this point I want to add that, as eBay, we naturally know about this problem and want to support brick-and-mortar retail. That’s why we launched a program called “eBay Deine Stadt.” Maybe we can also link that in the show notes. We wanted to talk more about trends. We’ve already talked a lot about live streaming, about developments in the cities. What else is coming our way next year?

Frank: I would clearly go in the direction of saying that in retail generally, first of all, we need to think about how, as a retailer, I’m going to deal with this reluctance to buy that’s coming at us. And the first thing is that I naturally have to start turning the cost screw. So it’s actually a negative topic. I don’t really like talking about it that much, but it’s there and we can’t just ignore it. That means I have to turn the cost screw. And of course there are many offers that show how I can reduce energy costs with smart stores accordingly. I can only point to the retail climate protection initiative, which is more relevant than ever, because it shows very clearly how I can turn the cost screw by reducing energy accordingly. Now, on the other hand, I also need to think about how I can get qualified staff in the first place. Personnel recruiting is currently a huge topic. I need to think about how I can suddenly inspire people differently to work for my format. The seller’s market has become a buyer’s market, meaning as a company I practically have to apply to people. And there are now also very clear trends in this direction to do this digitally in a different way. For example, there is a company in Baden-Württemberg called “Schwesterherzen.” They solved this problem by launching an app that allows them to apply to people. And now they don’t apply by saying: send me your application documents! Instead, they go up to people and say: Listen, we’re going to ask you four questions now, and you answer them. What was your best shopping experience? So not really what you’d expect from someone looking for staff, but simply from the customer’s perspective, to understand whether they also have the customer perspective. And then a lot is shown from the company, from the team they work in. And you practically apply to them through that. Recruiting is therefore first of all about reducing costs. Recruiting is the big topic. And then of course what I said at the beginning: how can I activate people differently? How can I go about getting customers to buy from me through contexts rather than from the competitor who still isn’t doing that?

David: When it comes to cost reduction, I of course quickly think of the whole topic of refurbished or recommerce, meaning offering used or B-stock goods refurbished again. Do you also see possibilities or a trend in that direction?

Frank: Absolutely. If we look at the assortment, this is of course a huge trend that is also coming over from the US. I always think of Hudson Yards here, a first-level shopping center in Manhattan. And on the upper floor there are four stores that do nothing but refurbished. In other words, offering second-life clothing. Of course, all in the higher price segment. Used T-shirts for 500 dollars, then. But you can see this major trend in that direction. And I know many people who, triggered by the high costs that exist now, are always happy to fall back on used goods, which of course today also have to be properly refurbished and then advertised accordingly.

Tino: And Frank, we’re seeing the trend toward digital consumer goods right now, meaning metaverse, web3. How do you see the future of the retail world there?

Frank: So, that’s a topic I’m always very, very happy to talk about, because I really have to say, if you look at many online shops — or actually all online shops — they haven’t changed in the last 15 years. Now imagine we had a brick-and-mortar format that hadn’t changed in the last 15 years. Nobody would go shopping there anymore. In online shops we have a list view. We have a few elements at the top and bottom and that’s it. Not much has happened there. And if you look at it, I was at the Digital Fashion Week in the metaverse in May. I took a look at how things work there. Of course, the graphics can still be improved — anyone who has played Fortnite knows what is actually possible graphically. They’re not there yet. That also has a bit to do with the fact that they don’t yet have the computing power available. But suddenly the topic of online shops is being completely rethought. I get a very different shopping experience and have the opportunity to shop in a completely different way. It’s not new; we all remember Linden Labs back then, which launched Second Life. Back in my METRO days, I also researched there how stores of the future could look and we realized them there. But that then faded away at some point, and now you notice that when Mark Zuckerberg throws serious dollars at this topic, there’s a completely different financial background behind it. And I assume that this will really take off properly now. We’re seeing Walmart securing a lot of patents in this area and also bringing cryptocurrencies into the mix. And right now we’re seeing the topic of NFTs, how it has already arrived even with small retailers. There’s “Deiters” here, a carnival clothing retailer, which now also sells NFTs. So it’s arriving, but it’s still a bit more hype than actual trend, that has to be said. And I can only recommend that retailers deal with it — not jump in right away, but familiarize themselves with the topic so they don’t lose touch. Because, as with all digital topics, developments there are also very, very fast. And if you lose touch there, you simply can’t keep up anymore.

Tino: Exactly, and NFTs are these non-fungible tokens, basically the digital certificates you can buy, for example for works of art, sneakers, I’ve seen. It’s also starting in the toy industry now. I’ve noticed it a few times with Hot Wheels as well. So a lot is happening right now.

Frank: Yes, and also this topic of digital works of art. It’s a kind of story that, up until now, actually couldn’t be marketed. And through these NFTs, it’s finally possible to give artists what they actually deserve.

Tino: And I’m definitely going to check out “Deiters,” because we also have one here in Berlin at Alexanderplatz, by the way; they have a store there too.

Frank: I can only recommend that. We recently had an event — I’ll put the link in the show notes here — where we had an event on the topic of NFTs at the Competence Center for Retail. We had the Deiters representative there, and she explained exactly what they do there, it was with video, so I’d be happy to share that here later.

David: Another topic that also goes a bit in the direction of web, though not quite as far, is the whole topic of smart home possibilities with voice commerce. How relevant do you see that, and do you think more will happen there than before?

Frank: We’re currently in a kind of conditioning phase, I notice that. The solutions are getting better and better. And we’re currently in the phase where we’re teaching people to tell machines what to do for them. My Siri also keeps showing me the way somewhere automatically. Then maps open on the smartphone and it navigates me there, right down to being able to tell it who I want to talk to and then the call is placed automatically. That means I’m currently being conditioned to learn a language too, one has to say, that this device understands. You also have to use certain phrases, otherwise it suddenly calls grandma even though you actually wanted to drive somewhere else. And we’re in the conditioning phase where people are increasingly learning to interact with such machines. It’s robotics we’re working with here, and I still don’t really see the big breakthrough in retail where people are actually shopping through it. But that has to do with the fact that this conditioning phase is still ongoing and hasn’t really been completed yet.

David: So currently still not entirely relevant, but one should keep an eye on it and familiarize oneself with it.

Frank: Yes, we also have small retailers who are already active in this area. They use Amazon’s Alexa to suddenly land in the living rooms of potential customers. For example, we have this Hit market near Aachen. Through its own application, it uploaded its flyer, opening hours, and such things into a skill. And now you can say: Alexa, tell me the opening hours of Hit Sütterlin, that’s what it’s called, and let’s say the weekly offers, and then you get them all read out. So of course the possibility also exists for small retailers to suddenly land in people’s living rooms through the Trojan horse of a large provider with their offering.

David: And the same then also for Google Home and such things.

Frank: Yes, certainly.

David: What we haven’t talked about at all yet: we’ve spoken quite generally so far, but there is, you already mentioned it and it’s naturally a trigger thing for Generation Z. Yes, the young people who, as you said, are the future — what do you think, how can especially more established retailers reach young people? And what should one prepare for next year?

Frank: So here we need to look again. I’m absolutely a foe of Generation XYZ and so on. That’s where we’re pulling out that segmentation I just talked about again. I need to talk much, much more about people’s needs accordingly. I’m already 60+, but every now and then I’m also Generation Z. For example, when I’m on TikTok. I also like to get inspired there. And if you look at the range of content providers now on TikTok. The undertaker, the lawyer, and whatever else, there’s actually a complete range of everything there. So it’s no longer just a channel for young people. It was at the beginning. Nowadays, many people are there who provide content and of course also consume content. And as a retailer, I naturally have to think about how I can activate young people. And I activate young people, of course, through the needs they have. And I have to deal very strongly with those needs. For example: if I’m a retailer in the gaming sector, it’s naturally much easier for me because then I can satisfy the target group’s wishes accordingly. But if I’m not a gamer/gaming provider, but I know that many of my customers have gaming as a second passion, then I can wonderfully combine the two. And I can say, look here, if you take this or that offer, I can simultaneously offer you five stars in this or that game, so to speak, by making bundle packages. And that’s what I have to figure out. What does my persona look like? That brings us back to the topic of recognizing needs and walking in the customers’ shoes. Who is sitting at the other end of the monitor and how can I ultimately reach them? Again, as Atze Schröder says: I have to press the right buttons on people.

Isabell: I think we could ask you many, many more questions. Thanks for taking so much time for us today, dear Frank. Do you have one final tip you’d like to give our retailers?

Frank: My tip goes in the direction of understanding that the rules have been reversed. No longer am I the one with my finger on the trigger, practically getting the customer to buy from me through a campaign or through super prices. Instead, the customer has their finger on the trigger. The customer is the one who now decides what brings the most added value for them. And that’s where we’re talking about values, and as a retailer I have to think about values.

Isabell: That was a very, very nice metaphor. Thank you very much for the lovely closing words and thank you for being with us today. We talked a lot about the topic of e-commerce in 2023, about current and upcoming trends, a lot about generation, recommerce, digitalization, but also about brick-and-mortar retail. It was a colorful range of topics. Probably not equally relevant for every retailer, but still important to always keep all topics in view and stay on the pulse of the times. I think our retailers are definitely a little better prepared now for the coming year and already know which subject areas they can expect. And if you, Frank, have listened to our podcast before, then you know there’s one more question coming your way. Namely, what was the last thing you bought on eBay.

Frank: I can tell you. I’m a fan of Italian three-wheelers. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. They’re called Ape, which translates to bee, and they drive around in the vineyards and are very narrow and have very small engines. And I have several of them. I collect them a little, and the spare parts for them are best bought directly via eBay from Italy. And those were fenders.

David: Very nice. So you have your own Ape?

Frank: Three!

David: I love those things too. There are also beautiful, beautiful espresso setups for Ape and stuff like that, oh great. But that brings us to the end of this episode. And as I said, we could have listened to you for ages. We’re very happy that you gave us a little overview. Dear listeners, as you know, we would of course also love your feedback on the podcast. So please leave a comment in the eBay Community, rate the episode you just heard wherever you listened to us, and subscribe if you want. Otherwise, we’re of course looking forward to the next episode with you, Tino and Isabell. But many, many thanks again, Frank, for your time, your insights, and the truly exciting conversation with you.

Tino: Yes, Frank, many, many thanks. It was really great fun.

Frank: Likewise from my side. Thank you very much for the invitation. Until next time.

David: Until next time.

Isabell: Bye.

Tino: Bye.

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Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 2 months ago

1 comment

joey19610

·2 months ago

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Hello, wanted to buy a spare part in the USA via eBay. Now I need to give the seller my address regarding the shipping costs, but eBay doesn't allow that. What do I do ?? Thanks