• According to the data of a study carried out by Deloitte Retail industry outlook for 2023, product price becomes more important to buyers than brand.
The Deloitte Retail industry outlook 2023 study was conducted in the United States based on a survey of 50 executives from leading companies, responsible for making strategic decisions within the company.
According to the Deloitte study, cited by Agerpres, two-thirds of retailers predict that price will become more important to consumers than a particular brand. With shareholders putting increasing pressure to raise prices to counter rising production costs, traders believe this situation will create difficulties for them.
A whopping 70% of retailers believe that supply chain deficiencies will affect business growth in 2023. At the same time, seven out of ten respondents say inflation will take its toll on business profits, and workforce management remains the top challenge of the current year.
Improvements for online commerce infrastructure
The study also underlines the fact that the change in the behavior of buyers will have consequences on the activity of retail companies. It also recommends that retailers improve their online commerce infrastructure to cope with these changes in consumer behavior. The necessary improvements should take place both at the level of delivery and return services and to develop sales through social networks.
These recommendations are based on the fact that in 2022, 94,4% of millennials were using smartphones, and the average time spent on social media has increased over the last decade by more than 60%, reaching 8 hours per day in 2021. In the same time, a percentage of 61% of users follow the advice of influencers, and only 38% take into account the suggestions of a certain brand.
Online shoppers have ever-increasing expectations
On the other hand, online shoppers have increasingly high expectations for order delivery, so already most companies are announcing their intention to invest in modernizing their supply and distribution chains. These projects include automated order processing centers that help increase storage capacity, but also the speed of product transfer, ultimately leading to the efficiency of the entire process.
Raluca Baldea, Deloitte Romania Fiscal Services partner and leader of the retail and consumer goods industry declares: "Online commerce is gaining more and more ground in European countries, including Romania. Growth accelerated during the pandemic, and although it has since moderated slightly, marking shoppers' desire to return to physical stores, the latest data shows that the future of commerce is, in fact, online.
Conform Eurostat, in 2022, 64% of European Union citizens bought products or services online, 1% above the level of 2021. The most active in this direction are young people between 25 and 34 years old (87% bought online in 2022). In Romania, the percentage of those who buy online is only 46% of citizens, but our country is among the EU states with the highest growth rate recorded in the last ten years.
Therefore, retailers must adapt to this trend and offer customers complex services associated with online commerce (more attractive ways to present products, fast order processing, efficient returns), given that, at least in the EU, buyers choose everything more often products from other member states."
Article written by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
Read on White Art and: Honey – and indulgence and health
