It shouldn't even be called ecommerce anymore, but quick commerce. In the West, many associate it with Amazon, while in China he speaks the language of Alibaba. What matters is that market trends have been accelerated by the pandemic - with the boom in orders filled all over the world - and that the new challenges are on delivery times (but not only). In recent decades, this digital sector has been one of the areas where the most innovations have been made thanks above all to the use of data. Before delving into them, if you are interested in these issues we suggest "The technological challenge: how to cope with the exponential pace of innovation“, One of the numerous panels of the next edition of Festival del Futuro. This in particular - scheduled for November 18 from 10 (here the whole program) - is made in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano and will be chaired by professor Umberto Bertelè.
Ecommerce: not just Amazon
While Amazon is still working to figure out how to propose parcel deliveries in half an hour, a German startup founded less than two years ago in Berlin has launched its business idea: deliver the shopping in about ten minutes from the order. Gorillas, this is the name, was born from the idea of the Turkish-born entrepreneur Kağan Sümer which has set up a network of dark stores - supermarkets to which the end customer has no access - which function as supply centers. Here, in 90 seconds, as he explained in this interview Alexander Colella, general manager of Gorillas for Italy, the riders collect the shopping that they then go to deliver. The key to all of this is the physicality e-commerce, which is structured on the territory with a widespread presence.
And it is precisely this presence that has made the fortunes of Amazon, with his fulfillment center scattered across all continents, capable of powering a machine that must meet the needs of all customers (Prime in the lead). Recently the Seattle giant changed its leadership: in place of the Founder Jeff Bezos He has gone Andy Jassy, already at the head of AWS (the digital infrastructure service that the multinational provides). And this summer, the company announced plans to open physical stores to be placed side by side with the existing ones: the goal is to conquer new slices of the market in order to reach the consumer better and earlier. The chapter of the delivery with drones, challenging terrain on which Amazon competes with Walmart. However, to frame the stars and stripes market today, online, more money is spent on Amazon than on any other platform or site (if we exclude China with Alibaba).
Would not be ecommerce if we did not finally talk about the means of transport on which will run. The watchword for any innovation is sustainability: green and electric vehicles will be essential. In all this the autonomous driving is in the process of experimentation around the world, from the United States to China. Frontier technology, about which doubts still remain for the transport of people, could however give a taste of reliability with the transport of food. An example comes from overseas, where a well-known chain of pizzerias has chosen small self-driving vehicles for home deliveries.
