The revaluation of local and proximity eCommerce

One of the best things about having an online store is the flexibility. With an online store we can go as far as we want, because scalability is much easier than with physical stores.

With e-commerce, we tend to always think big because, after all, the Internet is a global channel that opens our storefront to the whole world. But, for some time now, certain attributes that are at the other end of the spectrum are becoming much more valuable. Local eCommerce is becoming more and more interesting for customers and is therefore something to take into account in our strategy.

The shift towards eco-friendly has gone from being something alternative or a somewhat marginal moral stance, to become a real purchase driver for many users.

More and more people are buying locally as a way to support community, and this can be transferred to the online channel as well.

Local commerce consumers have changed their mindset: they are no longer four "radicals" who look closely at product labels, who recycle and, in short, conceive consumption from a responsible point of view.      

What does this have to do with proximity eCommerce? As much as the fact that products manufactured or produced at a shorter distance from the end consumer have a much lower carbon footprint.

Another of the values that working with local businesses really brings is that traceability is promoted. It is always very interesting for the customer to know where the product comes from and to be able to understand the process it has gone through until they have it in their hands.

Local sellers, unlike those who send their products from more distant countries, generate the confidence of being able to understand you in your language, share the legal framework or even have a physical address to which you can really turn to in case of any incident.

In terms of logistics, what it means to bring a product from China or India has nothing to do with what it means to bring it from Alicante (for example).

There is an undoubtedly economic issue in all this, since the costs, logically, are much higher in the import of any good. In one way or another, this has an impact on the price we apply to our products or on the margin we receive (depending on whether or not we pass this cost on to the customer).

In the case of buying from a store or marketplace from another latitude, things get more complicated. The customer may have to wait weeks to receive his order. And that, in an environment that is increasingly more immediate and even rewards same-day delivery, is a handicap even for giants like Aliexpress (which was forced to set up a logistics platform in Spain in order to compete).

Local eCommerce can be very competitive in delivery times with a lower cost in parcels.

There is also another aspect to highlight: reverse logistics. Returning a product to China or the United States can be quite an odyssey - enough to dissuade more than one person from buying.

Working with local eCommerce implies being within their context. If your country has a stable situation, it is logical that you will not have major problems. Or, at least, that customers are aware of those problems because they affect them transversally and at all levels.

However, buying outside your borders means facing multiple potential complications. With everything that has happened as a result of coronavirus, it has been seen how international markets can be taken up; but there can be other types of incidents that are not necessarily health-related: wars, blockades, international conflicts...