Estrategia comercial

Commerce strategy is the decision about where your commercial growth comes from before any channel question is answered: which demand your business is positioned to capture, what makes a customer choose you inside it, and which channels deserve to carry that demand at economics you can defend. Vivaldi has advised commercial and digital leaders on this since 1999. We are a strategy firm: we decide and we model, we do not build or operate commerce platforms.

Most commerce conversations start one level too low. The agenda arrives as platform, marketplace, media mix or replatforming, and the harder question goes unasked: why would a customer choose this business at all, and where is the demand that would make the channel decision obvious. Commerce strategy is demand architecture rather than channel management. It is bought when growth has been purchased rather than earned for long enough that the economics have started to work against the business.

• Desde 1999estrategia de demanda, comercial y de clientes
• Más de 200estudios de caso publicados
• 10 oficinasen cuatro continentes
• 5xWirtschaftsWoche: Lo mejor de la consultoría
• Advisory onlyno platform, media or build revenue behind the recommendation

Cuando las empresas nos contratan

• Customer acquisition cost has risen faster than gross margin for three years running, and the plan for next year is more spend.
• Every channel reports a positive return and the business as a whole is not getting more profitable.
• A digital business built as a distribution arm of a retail operation is now carrying a growth target it was never designed to hold.
• Channel teams each own their own number and nobody owns the question of why the customer chooses this brand.
• A platform, marketplace or replatforming decision is on the table and the commercial case for it has not been made.

Why more spend does not fix commerce growth

The loop is rational at every step and ruinous in aggregate. Acquisition costs rise, so spend rises to hold volume. Margin compresses, which makes the business more dependent on the channels compressing it. Discounting defends the quarter and teaches the customer to wait, which raises the cost of the next sale. Nothing in the sequence is a mistake, and the destination is still a business that cannot grow without buying growth.

It closes for structural reasons rather than foolish ones. Paid growth is measurable in the week it happens and earned growth is not, so budget flows to whatever reports well. Platform economics move without warning, and a business built on distribution it does not own has no vote in that. Channel dashboards say where a sale was recorded, which is rarely where it was decided.

The opposing argument deserves to be stated honestly. Paid acquisition is a legitimate instrument and often an excellent one: it scales a proposition efficiently. What it cannot do is create one. If nothing about the offer earns preference, spend buys transactions at a rising price and stops the moment it stops. Our related argument that marketing should raise return on invested capital rather than chase return on ad spend makes the same point in the marketing budget.

What our commerce strategy services include

1. Mapping where demand will pool

Demand spaces are defined by what customers are trying to get done, not by the categories an industry has agreed to sell in. We size and rank the situations in which your product is a credible candidate, separate the spaces that are growing from the ones being defended by incumbents with better economics, and identify where you have permission to win. That answer is usually narrower than the ambition and wider than the current catalog. Erich Joachimsthaler’s case for owning demand spaces rather than categories is the argument this stage rests on.

2. The reason to be chosen

Once the space is chosen, the question is what makes you the obvious answer inside it: the proposition stated in the customer’s terms rather than the product roadmap’s, what a preference premium is worth in this space, and whether current pricing captures any of it. We separate where you are genuinely differentiated from where you compete on price, because the commerce motion should be different in each case.

3. Channel and format economics

Channel decisions come after the demand decision and they are economic decisions. We model the real contribution of direct, marketplace, retail and social after fulfillment, returns and fees, assign which channel serves which demand space, and name the channels kept for reasons nobody can defend. Where personalization is proposed, we price what it is commercially worth against what it costs to build before anyone commits to building it.

4. The commercial case and the measurement line

Economic profit first, then revenue from demand spaces the business did not previously serve, price realized against preference, lifetime value and cost to serve, each traced from the decision that produced it to the P&L. Channel dashboards remain the right instrument for running the operation and the wrong one for judging whether the strategy was correct.

5. Handover into how your teams plan

A demand map that lives in a deck dies at the next reorganization. We leave the model, the segment definitions and the economics inside your planning cycle, and we work with the channel owners who will have to argue for it after we are gone.

How a commerce strategy engagement works

1. Establish the real economics. Contribution by channel after fulfillment, returns, fees and discount, and the trend in acquisition cost against margin. Most engagements find the picture is worse in one channel and better in another than the reporting suggests.
2. Map and size the demand. The situations customers are trying to resolve, ranked by size, growth and how credibly this business can claim them. Research is primary and the output is a map the commercial team can plan against, not a segmentation deck.
3. Choose and price the position. Which spaces to go after, what the proposition has to say inside each, what a preference premium is worth there, and what the whole move is worth in economic profit against the cost of making it.
4. Assign the channels and the measures. Which channel carries which demand space, what each is measured on, and the small number of indicators that will show in-year whether the strategy is working. We say which existing commitments the plan requires you to stop.

Why companies choose Vivaldi for commerce strategy

We have no commercial stake in your answer. We do not sell a commerce platform, we do not take media budget, and we do not have an implementation business that benefits from the recommendation being a replatform. When the honest answer is that the current channel mix is fine and the proposition is the problem, nothing in our model is harmed by saying it.

The firm’s method is built on demand spaces and the Interaction Field rather than on the funnel, which is why our first deliverable is a view of demand and not a channel recommendation. And we argue commerce in financial terms: our 2026 study of twenty-four years of stock market data found that strong global brands beat the S&P 500 by 3.7 percentage points a year between 2001 and 2024, with a dollar invested becoming $15.85 against $7.03 in the index. Preference is a commercial asset, and it is the thing paid acquisition cannot manufacture.

How to evaluate a commerce strategy consultant

Merece la pena preguntárselo a todas las empresas de tu lista de finalistas, incluida la nuestra.

• Is the first deliverable a channel recommendation? A firm that can tell you the answer before it has looked at demand has a house preference, not a strategy.
• What do they do with platform fees and returns? A commerce argument that ignores contribution after fulfillment is a marketing argument wearing a commercial costume.
• Who implements? A firm with a systems integration business attached has a commercial interest in the answer being a replatform. That is structure rather than dishonesty, and it is worth knowing which you are buying.
• What happens to the model afterward? If the demand map does not change how your teams plan, it was a report rather than a strategy.
• Will they tell you to stop something? A plan that adds channels and removes none has not made a choice.

Commerce strategy consultancy vs performance marketing agency vs e-commerce implementation agency?

Trabajos relacionados

Commerce strategy is the broadest question in this group, so most engagements hand off to a narrower service once the demand decision is made.

• Connected commerce is the parent practice this page sits inside, and it owns digital commerce consulting: how the channels are run off one view of the customer once the strategy is set. If your question is platform, architecture or continuity between channels rather than where demand comes from, start there.
• Commercial strategy is one letter away from this page and a different service: it works on the proposition, pricing and route to market across the whole business, while commerce strategy is specifically about where commercial demand sits and which selling channels should carry it.
• Direct-to-consumer programs is where DTC intent belongs: standing up and running a direct channel, including the conflict it creates with existing trade partners.
• Direct-to-consumer and adaptive e-commerce strategy covers adaptive e-commerce: running and adapting the e-commerce business itself, its proposition, its economics and its operating rhythm.
• Digital, experiential and physical retail answers what each store and format is actually for once the demand spaces are chosen.
• Social commerce strategy is the right page when the demand space you have chosen gathers inside a marketplace or a social platform rather than on your own estate.
• Dynamic customer journey strategy is where to go when the proposition is right and the path to purchase is losing people.

The underlying method is shared with our demand landscape practice at Vivaldi, the strategy firm behind the Demand Landscape and the Interaction Field.

Commerce strategy in the US and worldwide

We advise from ten offices on four continents, with the commerce work concentrated in New York, London and Germany. That matters more than it sounds for this service: channel economics are local. Marketplace share, delivery expectations, returns behavior and the strength of retail trade partners differ enough between the US, the UK, the German-speaking markets and Asia that a single global channel plan is usually a plan that fits none of them. We size demand by market and say where one strategy can travel and where it cannot.