The year of e-commerce: how to end 2020 raising the stakes
In Latin America, end-of-year sales events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Buen Fin will be the perfect occasion to win the loyalty of new digital shoppers, and in-game advertising is one way to help brands stand out.
With the end of the year already in sight, Latin American retail is getting ready for big promotional events such as Buen Fin in Mexico and Black Friday and Cyber Monday in pretty much the entire region. At a time so ill-suited for big concentrations, they are not only an opportunity to increase sales, but digital retailers in particular have the chance to consolidate new shoppers than only started making online purchases during the pandemic.
Across the region, sales events grow year by year and face up to economic crises with discounts and financing opportunities. As the amount of transactions, the total billing and the number of participating stores continue to grow, so does the share of digital sales, and more and more of those are digital. The last edition of Hot Sale, in late July, confirmed this trend.
If the digital world already had a huge role, not just for making purchases but also for researching and comparing prices, the pandemic gave this transformation an extra boost. According to many experts, coronavirus drove e-commerce 5 years into the future in just a few months. At the beginning of the year HSBC estimated that by 2030 the digital share of Latin American retail was going to jump from 5% to 18%. Now, they adjusted that forecast to 25%.
In 2020, 24% of the region’s consumers used new shopping channels, especially for FMCG, according to Kantar. 78% of them claim they’ll continue to shop online –especially in Brazil (82%), Chile (77%) and Colombia (74%)– and one in three homes (33%) plan on doing it even more. Nevertheless, experts warn that users gained during the pandemic will have low retention rates. That is why, for retailers, these promotional events will be a key moment to win over users that only dared to shop online when they didn’t have a choice. Now that both consumers and brands had to overcome almost overnight the hurdles that kept them from adopting e-commerce, it’s time to help people forge lasting new habits.
And why do sales matter so much? Most consumers will choose a shopping channel depending mostly on discounts and financing options, and less so on convenience. They usually do research before making a purchase, comparing prices and information from their homes and on occasion going to see products in person.
That is why, focusing on convenience and low prices, digital retailers have the opportunity to provide a frictionless experience that seduces shoppers once and for all. But they will also need to stand out in an extremely competitive context, with high impact campaigns on the same channels where consumers shop.
On mobile, one way to reach audiences with targeted, disruptive and engaging experiences is in-game advertising. After all, with 252 million gamers, the Latin American video game industry is worth 6 billion dollars a year and grows at double digit rates. In this region, two thirds of internet users play on their cellphones, and 56% of them dedicate over 40 minutes a day to this pastime. Due to their reach and creative potential, mobile games can be a way for brands to stand out and break paradigms at just the right moment.
