thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz
Value, Relevance, Convenience – The Future of Retail

Value, Relevance, Convenience – The Future of Retail

the Future of Retail is, well, interesting. Retailers today face an increasingly fierce competition. This competition is both, between brick-and-mortar retailers as well as between online-retailers and brick-and-mortar. Amazon, for example, is eating an increasing share of department stores’ lunch. It already now is the second largest apparel retailer in the US. According to Morgan Stanley research, quoted in a recent business insider article: “Internet retailers (led by Amazon) have added $27.8 billion to their apparel revenue since 2005, while dept stores have lost $29.6 billion,” … “This share loss appears at risk of accelerating given 1) Amazon’s bigger push into fashion, and 2) consumer willingness/acceptance to shop fashion through Amazon.” Additionally, customers are increasingly demanding, which is fuelled by being better informed and by the willingness to leverage this information. As a result of both of these trends retailers are losing relevance. One of the main challenges facing retailers (and brands, btw) is that big scale online retailers can very strongly compete on price. They also have a strong edge in data, which fuels their online experience. But here is also the chief weakness of online retailers like Amazon: They are online retailers, which confines the experience that they can offer to, well, online. Consumers used and use stores for showrooming to get a physical experience of the product and/or service. This is a clear indication that online is not everything! Which is one of the reasons why Amazon experiments with Internet of Things devices like their Dash button, which they recently enhanced with an SDK; it does also explain why Amazon is experimenting with kiosks and retail stores....

SocialMeetsCRM exhibits at retail australasia summit and expo

SocialMeetsCRM is happy to announce our presence at the retail australasia Expo & Summit that takes place on May 21 and 22. Together with our partner AdvanceRetail we will exhibit our integrated loyalty and coupon solution for Retail. Offer your customers the ease and convenience of a mobile loyalty card and coupons sent directly to their smartphones and their redemption with a simple scan directly at the POS. Expand your reach and have direct communications with your customers on important social networks and smartphones leveraging our Social-Mobile Collaboration Platform and our toha app. toha is available for iOS and...