Talks about Omnibus directive has been very much focused on the price history of the product and how record and prove that. On top of that directive contains several other requirements how ecommerce should be operated. The list of elements very briefly are:
- Price reduction, ie. the price history (30 days or less if product is just launched) of the must be available and how reducted price is “real” in reflection of that price timeline.
- Products that same but different, means that product that looks the same on different markets must be the same, of same quality, with same features or it needs to be indicated if there are differents (product actually is not the same).
- Pro vs. individual trader, consumers must know when they are making purchase with individual and consumer protection legislation is not applied.
- Search results ranking, consumer must be informed about the product search results sorting, is it affected by set filters, ratings or paid promotion. Just to name few.
- Consumer reviews must be authentic. Something that anyone would expect but is not self-evident. And reviews must indicate that if it was written by consumer who actually bought the product.
- Use of special algorithms affecting the pricing, if this happens, traders are assumed to inform consumer about special pricing (which is often increased based on interest on that product, think of air travel tickets for example).
- Free services, consumers can revert their registration within 14 days from registration. This is probably partially already covered by GDPR as any individual has right to be forgotten but it is now included to Omnibus directive as well that if user’s data was considered as form of “payment” of free services the consumer has the protected right to change their mind and “undo” the free service.
That is quite a list. It seems that many ecommerce providers, consults etc. have focused heavily on the first item, price history of the product, but there are (at least) six other points that would require careful attention if those are applicable to particular business of trader.
We spoke with one partner company in our network, Second Thought Ltd, who are the working on the bleeding-edge of the product data and information services, traceability and digital twinning. They are not directly an ecommerce services, trader or provider of services on the field but they have worked on many of the aspects that are included to the directive. Especially points 1, 2 and 5 are something that can be easily covered by good quality masterdata and lifecycle management of products.
It sounds like the data quality of products in general cross the EU member states is nowhere near optimal. If we take for example grocery products under the scope, same product is sold on manufacturer’s home market as one version and then it either is exported as is, as a variant or it is manufactured in other member state, perhaps with slightly different recipe, integredients or source of raw materials. For consumer this looks like the same product all the way, only difference they see is just the product packaging having the small print in different languages. And beneath the packaging it can be all different. How to manage all these variations so that the directive is followed? It seems that only these innovative companies might be able to follow but it is huge game to cover.
Hopefully we see some of the directive intent to become enforced, not that we would be big fans of added byrocracy and monitoring but the directive is clearly made for reasons that are known issues on various industry areas.