A.T. Kearney: "Aim to score in the niche"

"The German do-it-yourself market has been declining for years. But online trade still offers major opportunities for growth. We are confident that the share of e-commerce will increase to at least 15 per cent in the next ten years," says Dr Mirko Warschun, manager of the consulting field for the consumer goods industry and trade in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at A.T. Kearney.All major DIY stores in Germany now operate their own online shops. For this reason, consultants at Online Category Management have taken a closer look at the operators. Research was based on more than three million data points, which were gathered using fully automatic category scans. In addition, a comparison with international best practices was also carried out.The most important result: when it comes to assortment range, Amazon is unbeatable. This means the world's largest online marketplace also has by far the widest variety of goods in the DIY store segment. It exceeds that of the industry's second place, often tenfold. German cross-channel DIY stores are very much lagging behind here. "Domestic operators have to clearly define themselves. They now have to decide which assortments they wish to be best in class in. Aiming to beat Amazon in its range of products is definitely not a purposeful option," continues Warschun.
Read the second part of the report tomorrow at diyinternational.com