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Italiano625 online retailers from various industries took part in this year's online retailer survey, which was conducted by MCI | The Entrepreneurial School® (Prof. Dr. Claudia Brauer) and the ZHAW School of Management and Law (Dr. Darius Zumstein). After digital commerce was able to report massive sales growth in 2020 and 2021, normality has now returned to many of the online retailers surveyed. However, there is hardly any talk of a decline: for example, a large proportion of online retailers state that they have observed minimal to no impact on online business as a result of the widespread lifting of the Corona measures. "Customers have become accustomed to shopping online and have discovered its advantages for themselves," explains Prof. Dr. Claudia Brauer.
Nevertheless, e-commerce cannot avoid current world events and the challenges they bring. For example, two-thirds of online retailers are affected by delivery problems, with non-deliverable products, delivery delays, shortages of raw materials and long waiting times, as well as rising fuel and delivery costs among the most frequently cited problems. Deliveries from Ukraine are almost completely cancelled due to the war. In addition to delivery bottlenecks, online retailers are also struggling in terms of staff. Here, the majority of the retailers surveyed complain about a lack of skilled workers and know-how.
Product quality before sustainability
In addition to the current challenges, the most important success factors of online retailing were also researched. The quality of the products was named most frequently here, followed by their exclusivity. Product availability, customer orientation and the user-friendliness of the online shop itself play similarly important roles.
For almost half of the large online retailers, good and wide-ranging digital marketing is an essential key to success in e-commerce. In addition to newsletters and search engines, companies rely in particular on social media platforms to strengthen their online presence. "Due to the increasing importance of social media in recent years, this is not surprising," adds Prof. Dr. Brauer. For example, 60 per cent of the online retailers surveyed use social media as an additional sales channel, with Facebook (94 per cent) and Instagram (86 per cent) mentioned most frequently. YouTube is used by 41 percent as an advertising medium, LinkedIn (39 percent) is particularly popular in the B2B sector and only 15 percent resort to TikTok. Price, sustainability and regionality of products as well as returns and delivery conditions are considered less important by online retailers.
As in the results of last year's online retailer survey, credit card and payment on account are also among the preferred payment methods of online customers this year. In Switzerland, the mobile payment provider TWINT is also at the forefront, and in Austria, Klarna has made strong gains in market share. In addition, cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used for online payments.
MCI studies highly topical
For the second time, Prof. Dr. Claudia Brauer was significantly involved in the annual research study. At the Entrepreneurial School®, she teaches in the Department of Business & Management and provides her students with the most up-to-date and practical research results from the fields of digital marketing & analytics and e-commerce. She is also the academic director of the Executive Education Masters Digital Marketing & Analytics, which deals with the technical, strategic and legal content in the area of strategy development and online marketing.