This document provides an overview of key eCommerce trends and their implications. It discusses the rise of social, local, and mobile (SoLoMo) technologies and their impact on consumer behavior and industry trends. Major topics covered include the growth of mobile commerce, big data and personalized experiences, the importance of design and customer experience, and the need for companies to adapt quickly to emerging technologies and business models.

1. SoLoMo and beyond
eCommerce Trends
Mar 2012
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2. Agenda
• The most important trend…
• Consumer behaviour patterns
• Trends in the eCommerce industry
• Product design
• Globalisation
• Workplace changes
• Tech trends
• Implications for management
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3. The most important trend
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4. 4

5. Context-aware computing
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6. Suggestions of things to do Touristy places
Restaurants Blog your location as you move
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7. Consumer behaviour
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8. Sales growing, but penetration peaking
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9. Web-influenced >> Online
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10. Social media is for all age groups
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11. Eroding brand loyalty: deal-chaser nation
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12. Participative people power: no longer passive consumers
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13. The entertainment economy
>
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14. Conscious Capitalism (Collectivism)
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15. Industry trends
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16. Expedia is as much a software company as a travel company. LinkedIn is the world’s
top recruiting company. Even Barnes & Noble think of themselves as a software
company. There isn’t a single consumer industry not disrupted by software. 16

17. The rich get richer
• In Dec 2011, big online retailers grew 19% but
smaller ones grew only 7%
• Bigboxification: Amazon in 2011 = Walmart in
1971
• Paretto’s law: the 25 biggest online retailers
account for 75% of all revenue
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18. But also death by a thousand piranhas
The largest travel site, Expedia.com is under siege from smaller, nimbler specialists
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19. Companies can become wildly popular very quickly
Pinterest is growing much, much quicker than Facebook or Twitter 19

20. Companies are getting to $500m faster than ever
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21. But the decline can be just as swift
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22. eCommerce doesn’t create many
jobs, leading to interesting social
consequences
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23. A “mobile first” world
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24. The internet of things
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25. Data is the new currency
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26. The crowds are often wiser than the experts
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27. Freemium finally gets its poster child
Dropbox made $210m in 2011 with 70 employees, though
96% of its 50m users don’t pay anything.
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28. Seductive experiences on iPad
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29. Gamification
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30. Gamification on Mint.com
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31. Intersection of online and offline
“It varies a lot by category, but only about 9% of U.S. retail sales are online today, and that rate is
growing at only about 10% a year. And a lot of that buying is from the online businesses of physical
retailers like J.C. Penney and Apple. In reality, what’s growing is physical retailers’ extension into a
multi-channel world. As one grows, the other needn’t decline.”
- Ron Johnson, Apple and JC Penney retail guru, HBR.org
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32. Online ad spends: largest + fastest
growing
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33. The content business shows signs of
life

Full paywall doesn’t work NYT: 20 free articles / mo
HBR.org: 3 free articles / mo
FT.com: some free access
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34. Product design
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35. Democratisation of start-ups and VC
The low cost of starting a start-up, and easy access to seed VC is
enabling many entrepreneurs to take on more established players
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36. Well-designed, simple, low-friction products
Don’t do everything under the sun! 36

37. Customer Experience: front and centre
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38. 38

39. Light-weight business models
What good is building it fast and reliably, if you are
building the wrong thing?
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40. Staggered roll-outs of Facebook Timeline
Worldwide roll-out: Dec 15, ’11
Announcement: Sep ’11
(feedback and redesign)
NZ roll-out: Dec 5, ’11
(feedback and redesign)
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41. The two design philosophies are merging
The Apple model is more
The Google model relies on rapid edited, intuitive and top-
experimentation and data. The down. When asked what
company constantly refines its market research went into
search, advertising marketplace, e-mail the company’s elegant
and other services, depending on how product designs, Steve Jobs
people use its online offerings. It takes had a standard answer:
a bottom-up approach: customers are none. “It’s not the
participants, essentially becoming consumers’ job to know
partners in product design. what they want,” he would
add.
Apple and Google pursue very different paths to innovation, but the gap between their two models
may be closing a bit. In the months after Larry Page, the Google co-founder, took over as chief
executive last April, the company eliminated a diverse collection of more than two dozen projects, a
nudge toward top-down leadership. And Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s C.E.O., will almost surely be a
more bottom-up leader than Mr. Jobs.
The Yin and the Yang of Corporate Innovation (NY Times) 41

42. Globalisation
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43. VCs go global: competition could come from
anywhere
Israel has the highest VC per capita in the world! 43

44. Globalisation (per Forrester)
• International shipping will be commonplace
• More brands will sell direct in international
markets
• Companies will leverage their domestic
infrastructure before going fully global
• BRIC will still be the acronym, but CBIR
(China, Brasil, India, Russia) will be the order
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45. Death of the digital divide
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46. eCommerce is global
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47. Frugal innovation: simple interfaces in
emerging economies
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48. Workplace changes
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49. The war for talent
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50. So, new work environments
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51. Mainstreaming of the hacker ethic
Zuckerburg in the IPO filing
Move fast and break things
Code wins arguments
Done is better than perfect
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52. Technology
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53. Emergent business models:
“plan-do” to “envision-experiment”
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54. Technical Practices
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55. The platform wars
The huge tech companies want to own the full ecosystem: Amazon makes
hardware, Apple wants to sell books, and Google buys Motorola 55

56. Open systems beat walled gardens. Again.
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57. The magic of open APIs
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58. Big Data Ecosystem
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59. The retail technology landscape
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60. Tying it all together
“Softwarisation”
Value of Design
“You can’t know
Low cost of experimentation
Poster children
much upfront”
Intellectual
framework for
Emergent Business
Design
Pace of change
Designer Balsamiq (rapid prototyping)
education 60
Agile BI / Big Data tools

61. Bubble 2.0: It’s getting crowded, and a shakeout
may be coming
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62. Implications for leaders
• Adaptive leadership
• “Plan-do” to “Envision-experiment”
• Hire smart people. Set the vision and leave
them alone
• Get comfortable with ambiguity
• Lean what tech can do
• Rewire companies to
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63. Appendix: SoLoMo by the numbers
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67. Thank you
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