This week we start looking forward to the Internet Retailing 2010, our annual conference which this year is held on October 12 in London.
Each week we’ll take a look at a different aspect of the conference, with interviews with some of our speakers and previews of what visitors can expect. Today we start with an overview of the speakers and the issues that will be covered at the event.
At this year’s conference we’ll be looking at how we’ve moved back to ‘disruption as usual’ in e-commerce, says Ian Jindal, editor-in-chief of Internet Retailing. He says that a market that appeared to have reached some logical conclusions, set for simply for gentle tweaking and refining over coming years, has instead seen a tidal wave of change and major step forwards in development during the year.
“Maturity didn’t last long,” said Jindal, “it’s back to ‘disruption as usual’.
“Last year we were looking at e-commerce reaching its maturity within multichannel retail, with years of optimisation, commercialisation and continuous improvement ahead. To shake things up we’ve had the double/no-dip recession, the disruptive tsunami of m-commerce, social commerce becoming mainstream and of course the push of store-and-web integration. Never a dull moment!”
Against that background comes a conference that looks in detail at how to improve e-commerce. Trendsetting advice comes from our three expert keynote speakers, all drawn from leading e-commerce companies. They are David Walmesley, director of e-commerce at DSGi, Dave Hughes, director at Marks & Spencer, and Clare Gilmartin, EU marketplaces Vice President at eBay.
Then the customer, innovations that work and making cross-channel work will be the focus for three parallel conference streams.
In Track One, speakers from businesses including Royal Mail, Lovefilm and my-wardrobe.com will address ways of Captivating the Customer.
In Track Two, Reaping What you Sow, we’ll have representatives of Boden, Tesco.com and Argos, among others, focusing on the e-commerce investment that reap real rewards. And in Track Three, Making Cross-Channel Work, we’ll be looking, with help from speakers from Sanderson, Sage Pay and Euromonitor at the way small improvements can have a powerful effect on your overall process.
Alongside these, eight workshops, feature leaders in the e-commerce industry from Udayan Bose, founder and chief executive of NetElixir to Shane Fitzpatrick, EU managing director of Chase Paymentech.
And more than than 40 exhibitors, covering a wide variety of aspects of internet retailing, will also be part of a free exhibition running alongside the conference. For a full list visit the Internet Retailing 2010 Conference website at www.screenevents.co.uk/IR2010.
“We have senior industry figures reflecting on driving change and the challenges of innovation, commercial insights,” said Jindal, “and – of course – the most important aspect of all: face to face discussion time with your pace-setting peers.
“Now in our fifth year, IR2010 will have the usual blend of inspiration, intense parallel-track learning and peer networking around a focused expo. It’s the must-attend experience in the conference calendar”.
Internet Retailing 2010 is for business people in retail. Last year it attracted top level executives from pure play, multi-channel and bricks and mortar retailers, along with suppliers and analysts.
For more details or to reserve a place click here.
