Those Panamanian businesses that manage to hook the consumer to buy online will be the big winners during seasonal promotions, such as Black Friday .
To do this, they will not only need advice to design an adequate e-commerce strategy but they must also know how the consumer has changed in this time and consider the country’s legal rules.
“Otherwise, they could be hit with significant penalties. It must be remembered that for online sales, in many countries there is already legislation on e-commerce and for physical sales, there are still limitations due to health protocols, established by the authorities of each country, to face the COVID pandemic -19 ”, explained María del Mar Herrera, senior manager of EY Law.
According to the EY Law specialist , the Panamanian business sector has great expectations about how the market will behave in the face of this new Black Friday modality . According to some studies carried out by EY, the consumer has been adapting to making their purchases online.
“Throughout the Central American region, an important sector of consumers has tried the channel and will continue to use it. For this reason, it is important that companies seek advice to design an adequate e-commerce strategy for their seasonal promotions, which ensures that the consumer is hooked on similar terms, to what they did on Black Friday , in person “, he commented .
According to the results of the study Perspectives of the consumer sector after COVID-19 , carried out by EY, the remote experience of 8 out of 10 consumers in Central America was as good or even better, as their physical shopping experience. Therefore, a good percentage of them would be willing to continue buying through this “new” channel.
For its part, EY Law’s E-commerce Report study identified that global trends shaped by data use that were already underway prior to the coronavirus are now shaping overall mindsets and consumer behavior on an unprecedented scale. , promoting new business models and transformation.
The Central American region, with its 26 million Internet users , has also experienced this increase, marking the beginning of new trends or consolidating others already underway, in particular electronic commerce.
To demonstrate this increase and its enormous potential, the revenues generated by e-commerce have risen to more than 800 million dollars in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, where young consumers are more attuned to e-commerce.
Panama’s e-commerce revenue (currently estimated at US $ 650 million) is expected to increase dramatically, as well as in the other countries in the region, albeit more slowly.
What to expect for the future?
From EY’s perspective, the next generations will shape even more significant and disruptive changes that can be seen in the next 10 years .
A number of variables such as demand planning, the logistics costs, delivery time, cybersecurity, the data protection will be the real differentiators in consumer preference.
