Swedish Distanshandelsdagen 2014 had a strong focus on internationalisation, customer experience and cross channel scenarios.
Sweden’s e-commerce is booming: As an annual average, Internet shoppers spend more than 1000 € each – mostly on books, clothes and home electronics. Meanwhile, the online trading in Sweden generates an annual turnover of over 7 billion euros, with a rising trend.
In order to win market shares across the national borders of Sweden and Norway, many
e-commerce players pursue an internationalisation strategy. However, for target markets beyond Skandinavia technical, linguistic and cultural hurdles have to be overcomed.
Right at the start of the event a surprise: The organisation “Svensk Distanshandel” changed its name to “Svensk Digital Handel” (‘Swedish Digital Trade’). In line with this, the chairman Freddy Sobin announced the new vision “Every second purchase becomes digital”.
Sweden’s most important industry trade show in digital commerce, Distanshandelsdagen in Borås, offered on 30th of January 2014 an ideal opportunity for retailers and marketing specialists to gain insights into cutting-edge best practices and visionary ideas. Parallel on three stages, dedicated experts held lectures for the approximately 1100 attendees.
Renowned speakers on 3 stages.
On the “BigStage”, the speakers focused on the topic internationalisation. Very well received was Colin Moon, business speaker and founder of Colin Moon Communications, with his lecture “International and cross-cultural communication”. Therein, he pointed out the peculiarities of the Swedish culture in the business context and gave recommendations on how to win agility in planning and decision-making processes, in order to implement an successful internationalisation strategy. Not infrequently accompanied with ironic statements such as: „The Swedes have pre-meetings before meetings about their process meetings“, a situation almost every participant could relate to.
Which intercultural challenges Swedish retailers have to master when expanding internationally – this was illustrated by the communication expert Colin Moon in his lecture.
How will future payment solutions look like? And how can new, customized business models be found? On these and other questions were the topics on the “Academic Stage”. They linked e-commerce from a practical perspective with insights from academic research. Among the speakers were renowned scientists like Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management (OXIRM), and Niklas Arvidsson, Associate Professor at Industrial Engineering and Management at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH).
The “Platinum Stage” was a novelty at the Distanshandelsdagen 2014. There, platinum partners had the opportunity to hold their own lectures. The thematic focus here lied on customer experience and how to strengthen customer loyalty using connected sales channels.
Networking at the exhibition.
For exhibitors and visitors, Distanshandelsdagen offered an ideal platform to meet customers, prospects and partners. 120 exhibitors, beneath them providers of IT systems and solutions for payment, logistics, and eCommerce, showed their technologies and innovations. As a member of Svensk Digital Handel (SDH), also FACT-Finder was a present exhibitor in Borås. There, we met many e-commerce decision-makers and had interesting conversations: Our visitors were primarily interested in how to provide relevant information at various customer touch points, how to improve product data quality effectively – and how a language-independent search technology supports international expansion.
On-site search for cross channel scenarios, product data quality and internationalisation: At the FACT-Finder booth, we had many interesting conversations regarding the implementation of technical challenges in digital commerce.
So far, Distanshandelsdagen has increased annually in both size and number of participants and in 2015 it will take place in Gothenburg – a location we are looking forward to visit next year!
Written by: Joachim Braun
Joachim Braun is content marketer and copywriter in the FACT-Finder marketing team. He’s specialized in creating articles, blog posts and other content on all topics including e-commerce, product data quality, and retail strategy. During his work at FACT-Finder, he developed a deep understanding on e-commerce, conversion optimization and the latest trends in retail. In 2012, Joachim graduated from Stuttgart University and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and German Philology.