eCommerce Pulse: Pattern Executive Acceleration Forum with Jessica Cunning
Recently Jessica Cunning, Partner with Vorys eControl, spoke at the Pattern Executive Acceleration Forum in Sundance, Utah. We caught up with Jessica to get a pulse on what event attendees are talking about.
Q: What are some of the key things you took away from the event?
While it is true that Amazon is the dominant online marketplace in the United States (functioning both as a retailer and an online selling platform for third parties to sell products), it earns nearly 94% of its profit from advertising. This means that Amazon’s primary profit driver is not buying and reselling products or taking commissions from product sales by third parties. Thus, in some ways, it is more accurate to think of Amazon as an advertising company than an online marketplace platform. In order for a brand to be able to maximize its investment in advertising on Amazon, the manufacturer must be driving sales to its authorized seller(s), which requires a holistic control strategy for its key digital channels (i.e. Amazon and beyond).
Q: When you were at Sundance, what were some of the most common pain points you heard from attendees?
Brands are facing a myriad of challenges. Many are tackling systemic counterfeiting, curious to learn what mechanisms a manufacturer can employ outside of marketplace takedowns at the alleged counterfeiting source (evidence usually points to China). Others are heavily focused on measuring ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend), and many are concerned about retailer chargebacks and other disruptions caused by unauthorized sellers of legitimate products on Amazon, Walmart, and other emerging online marketplaces.
Q: What kind of follow up would you offer for these pain points?
Many brands are trying to tackle discrete issues with a particular vendor or platform subscription, resulting in even more to manage day-to-day and the “solution” providers being siloed from one another and sometimes working against each another.
Instead, we encourage brands to think about the efficiencies to be gained from the various brand protection functions working together under a single roof towards the common goal of maximizing the e-commerce revenue equation (traffic x conversion x price over the lifetime of the customer). Vorys eControl is an interdisciplinary team of lawyers, brand protection professionals, investigators, technologists and data analysts that designs, implements and executes online sales control solutions focused on driving brand growth and brand value that brings these capabilities under a single roof.
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