site.btaPersonalized Approach to Customers: Latest Trend in Online Trading

The latest trend in electronic commerce is the personalized approach to sales, Lyubomir Atanasov, founder and CEO of the Digital4 Foundation, told BTA on Sunday. According to him, this is achieved through various tools, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The aim is to get to know the users who visit the website and to offer them only what interests them, without imposing other items, which would only annoy them, Atanasov explained.

The expert said that Bulgarian businesses are largely forced to digitize their operations, especially their relations with customers. Users themselves are becoming more demanding and traders must be innovative and creative, said Atanasov. In B2B relations, however, things are not like that yet and digitization is developing at a slower pace there, according to Atanasov.

He also said that the research done by Digital4 in recent years shows that until 2019-2020, as a market share in Bulgaria, online trade had been growing annually by 0.5 to 1%. During the pandemic, this figure rose sharply by more than 11 points. Now, the growth of e-commerce is again within the traditional percentage, Atanasov added. According to him, the pandemic has had an impact in another direction: it forced traders to realize that if they want to survive in the market, they must be innovative.

When asked which business in Bulgaria is the most conservative, the expert expressed the opinion that it is probably the agriculture sector. He pointed out that in Europe, modern technologies are widely used in agriculture, which leads to more abundant crops at lower costs.

Atanasov also commented that there are still too many administrative obstacles in Bulgaria that slow businesses down. As a major problem, he singled out the lack of electronic services to facilitate and speed up the work of entrepreneurs.

Lyubomir Atanasov was in Varna for a conference dedicated to digitization of businesses in Bulgaria. Speakers at the forum, organized by the Digital4 Foundation, were experts from the IT sector, advertising, and online commerce. So far, such forums have been held in the six largest cities in Bulgaria, and Veliko Tarnovo will host it for the first time this year.