The figures are impressive: in 2021, Amazon accounted for more than half of online sales in Germany with a turnover of approximately CHF 49 billion, and 70 to 80% of end customers in Switzerland shop on marketplaces. The shift of online trade to platforms makes shopping much easier for consumers and has many advantages. End customers are well aware of this, asa study by Miraklshows: Customers cite cheaper prices (62%), the larger product selection (53%), advantageous delivery options and a better shopping experience (43% each) as the main reasons for their purchases.
However, this shift can be seen not only in the B2C sector, but also in the B2B sector. Innovative pioneers such as WUCATO Marketplace AG, which belongs to the Würth Group, has opened up its own online shop to other traders and is now the largest procurement platform for craft and industrial supplies in the DACH region.
The new retail reality must meet customer expectations of a broad but also deep product range. This requires long-tail, omni-channel and marketplace business models. Above all, the topicality of the offer is a key element. Success will only come to those who can offer a large number of products from a wide variety of suppliers in diverse sectors in high e-commerce quality at competitive prices. This results in constantly higher demands for the marketplace provider, which must be met. In order to survive in this competitive market, the marketplace provider must offer comprehensive services to bind suppliers, but above all end customers, to their own platform.
However, this only works if the best possible shopping experience is offered. In this respect, high-quality product data is central, which significantly supports and facilitates the customer's purchase decision. According to the results of a new global study by PIM provider Akeneo, 64% of customers are prepared to buy a different product if information that is crucial to the purchase is missing. Even worse: poor information about a product is reason enough for 66% not to buy. Those who do not invest in product data quality lose customers and thus turnover.
For marketplaces, therefore, the faster products are brought online with the complete and correct description from the unstructured and differently structured catalogues of the manufacturers, the better. In the long run, however, this can only work with a clearly structured and automated product data onboarding process that ensures data quality at all times. It is precisely this process that represents the link between raw product data and a realistic shopping experience.
Only those who can make both a broad and a deep range of products available online in a constantly updated and consumer-friendly way will have a modern e-commerce infrastructure that can keep pace technically in the future. Retailers are looking for a link that brings two things together: raw product data and a realistic shopping experience - in other words, consumable data.
