Global Marketing News – 31st May 2016
EU unveils plans for a single digital market
Companies like Google, Netflix and Royal Mail will be effected by new EU laws, designed to bring its ‘single market’, into the digital world.
The new rules mean that Google will have to be more proactive in removing search result pages infringing on copyright and hate speech laws.
Currently the company benefits from laws removing any liability from pages that break these laws, as long as they are removed when reported, but since the rise of social media and the ease of online publishing, the regulation of this law is expected to be difficult.
The changes also mean that video streaming sites will have to dedicate a minimum of 20% of their programming to European content, whilst TV advertising limits will be freed up.
Other laws introduced include the banning of websites making themselves unavailable in certain countries for discriminatory reasons, and more transparency for overseas postage costs.
Images are very important for mobile shoppers
According to a new survey by Nielsen, the ability to be able to see images of products when shopping online, is the most important mcommerce-related capability.
The survey was carried out in the United States and found that 62% of respondents’ value that ability on a smartphone, with 63% thinking the same on a tablet.
The survey also showed that nearly half of all smartphone users thought that having a mobile friendly site was an important factor while on a smartphone, and being able to read a product review achieved a similar score.
The comparison between the smartphone and tablet results shows that the size of the text is thought to have higher importance on a tablet, as does the security of the website.
Likely due to bigger mobile screens, however, online sales through smartphones doubled in 2015; giving total mcommerce sales a 26% share of America’s total online retail market.
Mypay to use m-commerce wallet
Mypay will begin using an m-commerce wallet to provide financial services for the population of the Myanmar.
The financial service provider has linked up with Cellum’s online wallet to help provide the unbanked 51 million people in the country with online payment services.
The wallet will provide services like online checkout, bill payment and peer-to-peer transfers, with registered users of Myanmar’s social messaging site, Mysquar, being the first 3 million people to receive access to it.
The Cellum Mobile Next facility will be made available under the MyPay brand through its commerce partners.
Snapdeal and Flipkart focus on net promoter score
Ecommerce platforms Snapdeal and Flipkart have begun to distance themselves from focusing on their gross merchandise value (or GMV) in India, and are instead giving priority to their net promoter score (or NPS).
Leading ecommerce companies in India have used the GMV metric for years, but it has received criticisms from some quarters for not being a valuable metric to follow.
Co-found of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl, said that “GMV by itself is not necessarily a good metric that demonstrates anything else outside the value of goods transacted.”
The NPS metric is used to measure customer loyalty as opposed to the total value of goods sold through a marketplace, and is the model favoured by global retail giant Amazon.
However, this switch has also attracted critics as some have suggested that the new NPS metric says very little about a business itself.
Baidu to launch online football portal
And finally, China’s largest search engine, Baidu, has signed a deal with the owners of Goal.com, Perform Group.
The pairing of the two companies has launched a new football portal, called goal.baidu.com; a site that will provide Chinese football fans with up to date information on international competitions and the domestic Chinese Super League, using goal.com’s 500 strong team of journalists.
The website will also use Opta, a stat gathering platform used by 800 broadcasters and professional leagues globally, including the English Premier League.
China has recently made a significant financial investment in football, with the Super League spending 300 million US dollars over the last transfer window, whilst the Chinese government has stated their intention to become a “football superpower” by 2050.
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Gemma Houghton
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