You’re the head of eCommerce, or the CTO of a major retail brand. You’ve got a national retail store presence, and a massive customer database. Your sales are growing, your team excels at merchandising, your commerce platform works well in the US, and you’re ahead of the curve in product innovation within your industry.
You’re running a well-oiled machine here, and now it’s time to expand into a new market. According to the Forrester Evolution of Global eCommerce Markets report, global expansion is set to explode in the next two years, so if you’re not thinking global you’re already behind. Given the projections Forrester has put forth, the question is not should you go global, but how do you globalize?
Forrester’s report on how to “Capture the Global eCommerce Opportunity” breaks down the the biggest changes across the global ecommerce landscape in the past five years. Here’s what’s changed:
- Companies across all categories are now expanding aggressively online.
- Brands are adding a more diverse set of countries to their lists.
- Businesses are looking for low-cost, low-risk ways to test international markets.
- Brands are turning to marketplaces as an option to enter new markets.
- Brands have a preferred global platform, but also assess the best option for each market.
- Organizations are carefully straddling centralized versus localized control.