K5 2018 took place in Berlin for the third time and has grown up. For the first time, the K5 conference was hosted by Jochen Krisch on October 6 and 7, 2011 in Munich, and managed to keep the Munich location until 2015. In 2016, around 850 participants attended the K5 "Shifting Value Pools" conference, and a year later around 2,500 visitors attended "Thriving in a World of Platforms 2017". In 2018, that number was surpassed. Many of the many visitors noted that the dealer conference had a lot to offer.
The central statement was that it Commerce should bind and retain customers better. Customer behavior is changing, markets are adapting and retailers are realizing that without an online connection they will miss buyers. The new world in which customers find themselves has a name: GAFA. This term is used to describe four of the five most valuable companies in the world: Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (excluding Microsoft), the traditional industries have been left behind, and it is in the GAFA-designated environment that future sales will lie.
The data collection services have shown that individual data columns and their exploration of attributes are becoming more important on a daily basis. Every website provides diverse and detailed insights about its visitors via free analysis programs, the social media platforms see statistical evaluations as standard. Orders simultaneously provide numerous secondary customer data with changes in stock levels. Companies have customer behavior on the website, which areas were viewed but did not lead to a purchase, and where exactly customers jumped off.
From such basic data, useful insights can be derived so that the next time the purchase process is not interrupted. Extensive and accurate product data is required, the product specifications are more complex. The customer wants to know it more precisely, the online sellers offer it. For the whole thing to work, it is necessary to clean up, order and classify the amount of data, remove the duplicates, and have the right data package at hand from various suppliers and intermediaries. This can be done faster, cheaper and more efficiently with a data specialist. A professionalization of the article creation process and data enrichment process can determine the purchase decision here.
What has remained is the course of the conference: various events were held simultaneously, new digital trading strategies were presented and topics with a practical slant were dealt with. Platforms are the business model of the future, on-time influences the resale rate, and the classic trading model is being phased out. Another slogan under discussion is: Potential beats experience in startups. It's no longer about experience, but about inspiring ideas and their implementation.
Experiences of online mail order companies, explanations of customer behaviour and logistics, as well as the influence of mobile devices on e-commerce were discussed on the first day of the K5 conference in Berlin. Data-driven adaptations, successes of small living room start-ups and their effects on the big ones, as well as the explanation that goods are sold online disproportionately every year, continued on the second day through the Estrel Congress Center in Berlin's Sonnenallee.
Due to the high density of top-class speakers, visitors were able to gain a very good overview of the innovations in the industry in a short time and with extensive networking, many participants were certainly able to take away further interesting insights and contacts. Next year is the time again, and then we will know whether the visions of the conference will be fulfilled.
