E-commerce lessons past and present

The Ehrenberg Bass Institute has shown that most online shoppers are also offline shoppers of the same retailer, but they are also more likely to shop at rival retailer’s e-commerce offerings – a practice that will only have grown as they experience shortages of items from toilet paper to pasta.

News 5 years ago Unknown author

E-commerce and its ability to decrease costs and increase efficiency is well suited to times of crisis such as these, and while brands need to be mindful of lessons learned during the last recession, they also need to think about what they can do in today’s very different circumstances; Publicis Sapient’s David Carr has some advice.

Previous recessions have been slow-moving affairs compared to what’s happening now. Even during the 2007-08 financial crisis, it took two consecutive quarters of negative growth to call a recession and at its worst, in Q4 2008, the economy shrank 2.2%; this time the UK economy is on course to shrink by 15% just in Q2 2020, with a direct loss of income for people and businesses hurt by coronavirus-related public health measures.

The first thing to do is simply to take stock of where you are, says Carr in his WARC Exclusive, Something old, something new: What can brands do in e-commerce during this recession?.

Read the full article on WARC.