About Forrester
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Martin serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals. His focus is on the eCommerce market within the European Union, with a particular interest in the retail industry, covering both pure-play online and multichannel retailing. His current areas of research include the application of location- and context-aware mobile applications to the shopping experience; social commerce; the integration of interactive media such as video into the eCommerce mix; and physical/digital channel integration.
Martin's background spans both business and IT roles. He joined Forrester from the retail industry, having worked at Boots, a major European health and beauty retailer, for a number of years. His role there was to establish and develop a business-aligned enterprise architecture function, delivering transformational strategies for a number of key retail areas, including boots.com, the Advantage Card loyalty scheme, and the retail and pharmacy store systems. Prior to that, he worked in a variety of roles at Egg.com, Europe's largest pure-play digital bank, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to new product development for both Egg and PruDirect.
Martin holds a first degree in manufacturing engineering and operations management from Nottingham University and a Master of Philosophy from Newcastle University by research covering the simulation of commercial systems.
Chief Digital Officer (or CDO) is the latest in a long line of snazzy C-level titles to emerge over the last few years. At Forrester we’ve been watching this trend for a while now and have made...
European online retail sales will reach €191 billion by 2017, up from €112 billion in 2012 – reflecting a 11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. ...
2013 is going to be a fascinating year for retail in Europe. When I look at what’s to come this year, I can paint a picture of what Forrester predicts by looking at a tale of two brands. Both...
The following picture might be a little harsh... ...but I’ve spoken to a number of eBusiness executives in luxury retail companies over the last 12 months or so, and by and large they share a...
I’ve been called upon to present on agile commerce many times over the last year, and when I do I most commonly start with this quote: "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the...
I’ve been thinking, talking to clients, and reading a lot recently about the rise of the Chief Digital Officer. Most of my recent research has been concerning the shift we are seeing in leading...
It’s no great surprise that many retailers are reporting an increase in multi-touchpoint engagement from their shoppers this year in the run-up to Christmas. Our own Technographics® data...
You’ve all heard the term “Omnichannel.” And since you are reading this blog I’m going to assume you’ve also all heard the term “Agile Commerce.” If not,...
I had the pleasure of presenting an evolution of our Agile Commerce research last week at the Internet Retailing conference in London. It was an interesting event on a number of fronts, but my key...
There are a few firms that I regularly point to as agile commerce exemplars, and one of them is Burberry. This always makes me smile because being from the north of England and growing up in a...
Mao Zedong is quoted as having said that: “A revolution is not a dinner party . . . A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” However,...
Here at Forrester, we’ve been evangelizing the concept of agile commerce for a while now, and we are working on a stream of research building on the concept and digging into exactly how...
Mobile commerce is a HOT topic! Over the last three months I’ve presented at 4 different European events on the subject of Mobile Commerce in retail, and in every other speech I’m...
I've written about the European Union's grand plans for eCommerce in the past. Much of what the European Commission wants to achieve is laudable and would be fantastic to see. After all, who...
The May 26th UK deadline for compliance to the EU ePrivacy Directive has come and gone. The result? Confusion among eBusiness executives. Some action. Some sites are informing us of what...
I’m constantly searching for great examples of agile commerce practitioners. These are hard to find, and it’s rare to come across any one organization that exemplifies everything...
Here at Forrester we have been talking about the concept of "agile commerce" for some time now, but it's not always easy to point to live examples of “agile”businesses. What is agile...
Concerns over crumbling economies, the collapse of the euro, and enforced austerity measures can’t have escaped your attention if you live in Europe. It’s easy to believe that consumers...
Every year at Forrester we take a look ahead at the driving forces behind online retail and make some predictions about how we think things will evolve and we try and identify the key trends...
In November 2011 Sucharita Mulpuru published a very well read Forrester research document entitled “The Myths and Truths About Daily Deals”. In this document she led with the...
Yesterday the European Commission outlined its ambition to create a “genuine Digital Single Market” by 2015. You can read the whole text here if you have some time to kill . . ....
EBay is now the latest entrant into the field of retail experimenters that are trialing the concept of a “virtual store.” EBay joins Occado and Tesco in embracing the...
With 43 shopping days left until Christmas 2011, eCommerce operations across Europe are gearing up for what looks like being a strong growth year for online retail. With the economic climate...
Disappointing news for UK shoppers today – Best Buy has announced that it will close its UK stores by the end of the year. Best Buy was a bit of a breath of fresh air in a multichannel...
Here at Forrester we’ve spend a lot of time this year evangelizing a new approach to multichannel commerce – one that we call agile commerce. The fundamentals are outlined here in...