IOU | GLOBAL DIGITAL E-COMMERCE TRENDS

The global eCommerce market has demonstrated explosive growth in the past couple of years and its future is expected to be booming. In 2017, the global e-retail sales amounted to 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars and projections show a growth of up to 4.48 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021. This astonishing growth is primarily being driven by consumers using their mobile devices to acquire goods and services.

In this ultra-competitive environment, finding and acquiring new customers can be a huge challenge for merchants. In addition, 53% of adults living in high-income households claim to be willing to switch brands for the sake of using a coupon.

The challenges for players in this giant market are key, including customer loyalty, achieving profitable long-term growth, and choosing the right technology and partners, among others.

At the same time, the tremendous evolution of blockchain technology is radically changing the way many markets operate. Important USPs of blockchain like transparency, coherence, cost-effectiveness and effective integration with processes at all levels of the business can bring to the e-commerce market endless opportunities.

Now, imagine the explosive combination of e-commerce, blockchain technology, and cryptocurrencies: the IOU Platform, a true P2P e-commerce loyalty platform on the blockchain.

It aims at empowering blockchain Merchants and Consumers with decentralized and secure Peer-to-Peer technology driving customer satisfaction and loyalty through Merchant’s trade-able IOUs. IOU Platform can successfully address many of the challenges of the e-commerce segment.

IOU is launching the IOUX token and a promising Initial Coin Offering (ICO) campaign. Below you will find all the relative information on IOU together with the specifics of the ICO campaign.

IOU VISION

IOU reinvents existing loyalty systems in order to provide more flexibility, control, and enhanced benefits for Merchants in order to guarantee the highest possible level of consumer satisfaction for the incurred marketing expenditures.

IOU “loyalty system” allows business owners to create a new level of interaction with consumers and, most importantly, provides the opportunity for consumers to freely exchange their IOU Offers with other consumers for other IOUs which are needed more for those trading parties.

IOU Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platform providing new opportunities for each Merchant (Business Merchant) in the world with regard to loyalty system organization, interaction with consumers, investment attraction, and revenue growth by the means of issuing its own freely tradable IOUs (IOU Crypto-Obligations / “IOU-CO”).

E-COMMERCE MARKET: A GIANT

The e-commerce market is a global giant. For private consumers around the globe, the most well-known form of e-commerce falls into the business to consumer (B2C) category, which includes online retail or online shopping. In 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online. During the same year, global e-retail sales amounted to 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars and projections show a growth of up to 4.48 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021. In Asia Pacific, e-retail sales accounted for 12.1 percent of retail sales in 2016 compared to 8.1 percent in North America, and only for 1.8 percent of retail sales in the Middle East and Africa.

E-COMMERCE LOYALTY

Finding and acquiring new customers can be a huge challenge. The reasons can be many, but the customer loyalty stats don’t lie: it’s roughly 500% more expensive to convert new ones than to keep current customers.

Fetching a new customer from the clutch of an eminent competitor is like an everlasting headache for marketers5.

When it comes to personalized online experiences in the US, the most popular [factors] were website optimized by the device (desktop, tablet, mobile) (64%) and promotional offers for items the customer is strongly considering (59%)6.

An interesting finding: 53% of adults living in high-income households are willing to switch brands for the sake of using a coupon7. This leads us to a major issue: the challenges that e-commerce faces.

E-COMMERCE CHALLENGES

In the era of internet, e-commerce is the king. However, this exponentially growing market faces some serious challenges:

1. CUSTOMER LOYALTY

It is a key issue as it takes lots of efforts for companies to make a new customer and maintain the same customer for long time.

One of the reasons why ecommerce companies face the struggle while building trust and loyalty with customer, is because a seller and a buyer don’t know each other, nor they can see each other while making a transaction unlike street-shopping. It takes few transactions, time and plenty of efforts by the company to build the customer trust and loyalty8.

2. ACHIEVING PROFITABLE LONG-TERM GROWTH

Increasing sales is one way to grow the business but in the end, what matters most is profitability. Online retailers must always find ways to cut inventory costs, improve marketing efficiency, reduce overhead, reduce shipping costs, and control order returns.

3. CHOOSING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY & PARTNERS

Some online retailers may face growth challenges because their technology is limiting them, or they’ve hired the wrong partners/agencies to help them manage their projects. Retailers wanting to achieve growth must build on a good technology foundation. They must choose the right shopping cart solution, inventory management software, email software, CRM systems, analytics and so much more. In addition, hiring the wrong partners or agencies to help them implement projects may also limit their growth. Online retailers must choose carefully who to work with.