Nowadays “Engage!” seems to be an imperative which most marketers must deal with. It is the result of the mass digitalization that keeps the consumer constantly updated, conscious, expert and source of influence for its connections. We study marketing, but we are clients first as well and we all know the buying process: you use your smartphones and tablets to shop online, plan and book travels, use social media to stay tuned with your friends and family.
Several questions arise at this point: is value truly created online? Are there successful example other than E-bay, Amazon and many international marketplaces?
It seems interesting to me to “open up a window” in my original country: Italy. Surely this new landscape leads to revise the marketing strategy by integrating internet marketing with traditional marketing methods in order to obtain the best results.
In Italy, e-commerce is spread out mostly in some sectors as tourism and free-time (above 30%); fashion, design and beauty are expected to increase though. However, only international marketplaces play a dominant role since they are able to deliver better assistance, products, prices and efficient post-sale assistance. There is the need of an Italian platform though, and in addition small Italian vendors lack of sufficient knowledge to manage online sales and still fear the conflict with other distributional channels.
Maybe some Italian vendors just need to be able to better engage clients, in a such a way to create trust by developing an efficient digital strategy.
The peak of the mountain is still high to reach, but the pace seems to have a good quality.
*Source image: The fresh idea group.com
