Hi Miriam from PTO.ie here - with another Retail prediction for 2019. I have my glasses on / serious head on today. A double whammy. My next retail prediction is around social media trading and also drop shipping.
So - first of all we’ve already seen a huge amount of ‘swipe up to buy’ and shopping on the likes of Instagram as well as on Facebook, where people are really going after social media as a really really important trading channel. And you would have seen a lot of influencers and a lot of dropship on social media this year. And that is only going to become more and more as a lot of retailers catch on and start to sell via social media directly - particularly on Instagram.
Drop shipping - just to explain if you're not aware of what drop-shipping is - Drop shipping is where somebody sells you a product - usually via social media - it’s often a really cool gadgety type of product. You swipe up to buy. That person who is selling that product - has never owned or seen/ handled the product. After you have paid for the product - they then order the product and get the product delivered directly to you. So you are essentially paying extra for some lovely slick marketing via social media quite often,as is the case.
So I think again this seems to be a bit of a trend. Hearing lots of Millenials saying ‘’I'm going to have a drop shipping business/ it's my side hustle’’. And so I think there is an going to be in an absolute explosion of drop shipping businesses appearing. It is already happening but will escalate and continue into 2019.
I also think we will start to see a bit of a backlash against this aggressive commercial behaviour - because the customer does lose out, particularly with drop-shipping - you tend to be paying over the odds for the product, and quite often you could be waiting for a very long time to have it delivered. So in 2019 it is also entirely possible that there will be a call for new legislation to a/ help to protect the consumer, and b/ to manage this a little bit more efficiently. So that is prediction number two - The explosion in social media trading and real selling on social media. As well as an increase in dropship companies will continue. And there will probably be a bit of backlash.
Watch this space. Have a great day!
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