With 30,000 visitors, 500 participating companies and 350 presentations and talks, E-commerce Paris is said to be the biggest event devoted to the sector in Europe, a forerunner of trends and a real laboratory for innovations.
Its positioning is evolving to make E-Commerce Paris the cross-channel event of the year. The 2013 show will focus on topical issues, making ‘Customer empowerment’ the main theme of the plenary sessions. With redesigned areas, a more extensive programme of conferences and of course, as ever, the E-Commerce Awards, the 2013 season is underway.
Today, the boundaries between traditional retail and e-commerce have become blurred: the internet provides retailers with sales points just as physical stores use e-devices – connected terminals, tablets, mobiles, etc.
To gain a better understanding of these new challenges, the show is taking the opportunity of its 10th anniversary to reposition itself to become the gathering for solutions for developing effective e-commerce strategies and successful cross-channel distribution and for maximising the customer experience.
In order to cover the whole e-commerce value chain, this year the show is offering a new ‘Customer Experience’ area exclusively devoted to the consumer pathway and experience. From the customer relationship to the digitalisation of the sales point, this new area brings together all the solutions aimed at optimising the consumer experience.
This new area will sit alongside the show’s three historical areas: Technologies (platforms, hosting, payment, etc), Digital Marketing (emailing, affiliation, big data, web analytics, etc) and Logistics (storage, packaging, delivery, etc).
The main theme of the 2013 plenary sessions places consumer power at the centre of the debates. Consumers no longer allow themselves to be dictated to in their choices by marketing and communication but take the upper hand with regard to their consumption; they are cross-channel, multiple devices, they want to experience global, enriched, qualitative consumption, to give meaning to their purchases, save time and enjoy themselves.
Consumers are already empowered by technology (internet, mobility, social networks, etc), but the brands which play their cards right and manage to appeal to consumers and win their loyalty will be those whose give them the most power: the power to buy at anytime, anywhere, with the same depth of offering and the same level of services, to have a similar buying experience whatever the point of contact, the power to be involved in the life of the brand and even in the creation of its product.
The 2013 E-Commerce Paris will offer a programme enriched with presentations and debates with a cycle of 3 different formats of sessions set to provide some of the event’s highlights: the plenary sessions (roundtables with feedback from major brands and their ‘best practices’), the keynote speeches (leading figures from the sector sharing their strategic vision) and the special sessions (recommendations from associations in the sector).
In parallel, a series of ‘Solutions Workshops’ will be held. These short presentations (45 minutes), given by expert companies from the market, are designed as real "tool kits" to enable visitors to discover the best offers on the market.
