Romanian Retail Convention: European retail’s new raising trend – Click & Collect

Cristina Blanaru Business, Events, Marketing

The second edition of Romanian Retail Convention took place on October 1st, in Bucharest, and was organized by Expo Media – part of Marketing Insiders Group.

The event highlighted a new trend in European retail shopping. According to Planet Retail study, dated April 2014 and made with the help of 15,000 consumers on 10 e-commerce key markets, shows that 35% of Brits that shop online use Click & Collect service. It is estimated that, by 2017, 76% from total online buyers will use those services. Click & Collect is a new way of shopping, adapted to Millennial buyers (multitasking, always in a race with time and dependent on technology). Click & collect combines online shopping with collecting the merchandise from shops

This type of shopping will definitely reach fast in Romania also. It is less costly than home delivery, makes processes more efficient, increases clients’ satisfaction and the prices are exactly like those in stores

Didier Jumeau,

Vice President Channels, Symphony EYC.

In Romania, 41% buyers are digital consumers, compared to 62% at global level, according to a study made by Ernst & Young this year.

2015 and the years who follow are full of challenges and opportunities. We must understand these new directions and to apply international solutions on local markets. Click & Collect is a business model that can be integrated with any payment method, including mobile payments. In this direction, Romanian Business Consult (RBC) closed a partnership with ING Bank for implementing and launching a mobile payment solution, ING Wallet, which will enter the Romanian market next year

Gabriel Pavel

Sales & Marketing Director Romanian Business Consult

The experts’ recommendation for retail companies in Romania is to keep the pace with the changes in consumers’ buying habits, which are directly influenced by the online phenomena, social media and tech development.

Once with the transformations taking place when it comes of indexing the content on Facebook, Romanian A-list blogger and social media entrepreneur, Cristian China Birta highlighted the fact that “The competition for retailers in social media isn’t national any longer, it is global. As studies say, you have 4 seconds to catch the client in social media”

In the same time with the development of multi-channel sales, specialists are warning that retailers shouldn’t diminish the importance of traditional sales process happening in stores.

Liliana Dobre – Business Consultant and Senior Trainer, Customer Service School – spoke, at the event, about the non-verbal language in retail:

In retail, the non-verbal language of the employees has a major influence over the clients they interact with, influencing directly client’s experience, his opinion on the company and his loyality towards a brand. This is the reason why we advice the companies to establish for their employers 5-7 customer service recommendations, easy to memorize and put in an attractive form in order to increase the implementation chances

This year’s conference included interactive presentations and insights useful to the public. There were present and held presentation known experts in the field like Cristian China-Birta (Chinezu) – A-List blogger and online entrepreneur, Stefan Liute – Strategy Director Storience, Gabriel Pavel – Sales & Marketing Director Romanian Business Consult, Radu Batrinu – Marketing Director Flanco, Radu Tanase – General Manager & Partener Calif, Liliana Dobre – Business Consultant and Senior Trainer Customer Service School, Miruna Enache – Tax Partner, Mihai Pop – Manager Transaction Advisory Services EY Romania, Dan Mazilu – General Manager Mediatel Data, and Silvian Centiu – Digital Marketing Visionary Transiris.

Romanian Retail Convention received support from partners like Romanian Business Consult (Gold Partner), Mediatel Data (Silver Partner) and Customer Service School and Mystery Shopping Agency (Supporting Partners). The media partners of the event were Retailers, AdHugger, Iqads, Retail-fmcg, Doing Business, Marketing Portal, Romania Libera, 9AM, Business Live and MediaTrust.