Brick-and-mortar stores are struggling to compete with online behemoths such as Amazon and eBay because they lack essential data and insights about their customers.
John Lunn, Global Director of the PayPal Developer Network, explained at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam how many high street retailers are becoming little more than ‘showrooms’ for consumers to examine a product before buying it elsewhere.
Moving forward, that’s just not a viable business model.
“Without data, you actually know nothing about the consumer,” Lunn said. “When you buy on an online website, that retailer knows where you came from, where you live, where you’re shipping the item, what items you looked at, how long you looked at them as well as how you pay and how you leave at the end of it.”
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He added: “You walk into a traditional retailer, now, for five days in a row and unless they’re very observant – they have no idea it’s the same person walking in and they know nothing about you by the time you walk out.”
Dive into Lunn’s keynote below to find out which startups are helping online retailers to maintain this market dominance, and what physical retailers should do next to fight back.
Don’t miss the rest of our coverage from The Next Web Conference Europe 2013.
Image Credit: Julia Deboer/Flickr
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