Mr. Alberto Virgilli works currently as eCommerce Marketplace Global Manager at Jaspal Group in Bangkok, after 15 years career in Fashion and Beauty industry in Europe and Asia (Unilever, Calvin Klein). Mr. Virgilli joined eCommerce industry at Alibaba Group leading the fashion category at Lazada Group.
For our new series of interviews with top executives and entrepreneurs, “Insights Talks”, our managing partner Mr. Eliseo Barbàra talked to Mr. Virgilli about recent and future trends in the eCommerce eco-system.
I think that one of the biggest challenge is to adapt culture, organization and processes to the new channel, often online and offline are considered alternative and not complementary.
Data management and operation processes are designed for offline and often don’t have the flexibility to quickly adapt to new business models.
I also believe that day to day store management comes with opportunities and challenges, for example an almost unlimited SKU space or real time price management need organization changes to be properly addressed.
For what I’ve seen during my experience, marketplaces can quickly scale their investment and offer state-of-the-art technologies for consumer engagement like instant messaging, virtual mirrors, live streaming, tools that require time and money to be developed internally by a brick and mortar company.
Given the high amount of traffic that marketplace platform can put together, the consumer reach can be much higher compared to the same amount investment in marketing tapping unexplored geographical and demographic areas.
Traditionally social media can drive to the platform store a high-conversion traffic, for example Facebook cooperative ads is a tool that recently is enhancing this approach boosting conversion rate.
The next step that I see will be to conclude transaction without leaving the social media platform, Instagram is moving towards this with its shopping tool that was released in U.S. market in 2019. In Southeast Asia Line is also heading to this direction.
Big data will predict consumer behavior and provide complete personalization of service, omni-channel and seamless purchase flow like click and collect or same day delivery. There are impressive example of this in China and U.S. operated by Alibaba and Amazon like cashless check out; I can’t tell which one of these will finally pick up as mainstream trend but for sure the way we shop will significantly change.
I think that omni-channel and cross border shipment will create more transparency with prices setting up new challenges on consumer engagement for multi-brand stores.
Overall I see coming an enhanced brand engagement, all the touch points with the brand will build this experience and also will be evaluated with public feedback resulting in shaping brand reputation.
Eliseo Barbàra
1015/29 Sukhumvit 71 Road,
Watthana, Bangkok 10110
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