Expert interview with Kathinka de Veer, bol
'Our 30-member group consists of experts with broad e-commerce experience from various organizations'
At bol, we believe we can improve every day. That's why we love learning from and with others. For example, we are affiliated with ShoppingTomorrow, which brings together a network of over 500 e-commerce experts to research the most important trends and developments within e-commerce.
In this article...
Kathinka de Veer, Head of Advertising via bol & Logistics Services Marketing, is one of these experts and co-hosts the expert group 'Building your brand successfully on marketplaces'. What will they be doing this year? Kathinka will tell you all about it.
In short
- 30 experts will work on a research question
- For bol partners, by bol partners
- The result: a bluepaper full of practical tips and advice
Why is bol participating?
'Within our company, we have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in online sales and the world of e-commerce. We want to share this knowledge with the market. Local partnerships are very important to us. How can we better contribute than through a network like ShoppingTomorrow? Besides the expert group I co-host, other bol colleagues are also involved in different expert groups. So, we bring in knowledge and insights from across the organization, but we also gain a lot of knowledge in return. And that benefits us greatly.'
'We want to make our platform more appealing to brands, so we can offer our customers great brands and more inspiration while shopping. Through this expert group, we hear directly from brands about their needs and challenges. That is incredibly interesting and valuable.’
What does the expert group you co-host look like?
‘I fulfill the host role together with Niels Floor, VP of Strategic Development at ChannelEngine. Additionally, Emile Valkestijn from 10XCREW is the chairman of the expert group. Together, we assemble the team of experts, define the research question, and choose the overarching approach to answer it. We also have strong ties with these companies; both are “Gold partners” in bol’s Apps & Services network. The three of us take the lead and, at the same time, contribute our knowledge as one of the experts in the group.
Furthermore, the 30-member expert group consists of experts with broad e-commerce experience from various organizations. This is very valuable, as they have practical experience and are part of the target group we are doing all this for. This allows us to work pragmatically. We create tactics and strategies with the experts and test them directly with end-users.’
This year, we want to translate this into concrete strategies and tactics to build a successful brand on marketplaces
Can you tell us more about the research question?
‘Certainly! This year's research question is: ‘Which strategies and tactics can be applied to build a strong brand on marketplaces and achieve profitable growth? With this research question, we are building on last year's research question and those from the two years prior. Last year, we investigated how to successfully build a brand on marketplaces using 3 case studies. We received cases from Bolsius, BSH Nederland, and Eden Appliances and analyzed them with the expert group. We presented the results in the bluepaper. We then concluded that brands currently consider 3 trends when successfully building a brand. This year, we will work more pragmatically and aim to translate this into concrete strategies and tactics.’
How do you work?
‘Together with the expert group, we will meet 9 times during the research year to conduct the research and elaborate on it in a bluepaper. We will launch this on October 10. We deliberately chose to build on last year's research and delve deeper into it. This way, we can provide practical tools that people can use, as we can make it more and more concrete.’
Where are you now?
‘On March 14, we had our first kick-off meeting with all expert groups. So, we have only just begun! There was immediately a lot of energy to get started. We are collaborating with various brand owners on this issue. The research can progress much faster because we can test certain hypotheses immediately. With this research, we want to help brands get started with building their brand on marketplaces. We are not only focusing on bol but on the entire marketplace landscape.’
Meet Kathinka de Veer
- Bol colleague since mid-February 2019
- Lives in Schoten (Belgium)
- As Head of Advertising via bol & Logistics Services Marketing, responsible for marketing our b2b propositions.
- What she enjoys most about her work is: tackling complex puzzles together with colleagues – the bol 'can do' mentality.