by twieberneit | May 16, 2016 | Blog |
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....
by tz4rgp | Mar 3, 2014 | Blog |
A few days ago I was asked for my top 5 tips for retailers on how to connect with their customers, limited to 100 words. For a topic that one could write a novel on … Well, here is my answer: – Help customers solving their problem. This distinguishes and makes you found by the customer – Marketing/loyalty programs offer your customers value and are not mere vehicles to gather more data points – Simplify your customers’ life, e.g. with a card wallet instead of own app that directly integrates with your CRM and POS – Relevant communications at the right time, place with the right content – without appearing intrusive. For this you need to know your customer – Consistent communications across channels and interactions, optimized for used touch point They probably need some more elaboration, especially the last one. First and foremost, the reason for any business to exist is making profit for its owners. This is not equal to producing and selling things (or providing a service) with a margin. The business will succeed only if it focuses on identifying its customers needs and then delivering solutions for these needs. It is not about pushing a product into the market (mostly, consider that needs can be created by smart businesses). This thought is well in the domain of Service Dominant Logic although I am not a strong proponent. Marketing and loyalty programs are important interaction vehicles between businesses and their customers. Both, especially loyalty programs, need to be set up to be mutually beneficial. It is not only about gathering more customer data that can be...
by tz4rgp | Mar 26, 2013 | News |
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...
by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
A while ago I blogged about threats and solutions in the retail industry that have their origin in rise of social media; with this post I would like to continue on this topic, focusing on possible solutions for retail companies. This blog also ties in to a recent article by Mark Tamis on Social CRM in Retail. In his article Mark describes an interesting and elaborate scenario that showcases a technology enabled, consumer and network driven decision process, using the example of buying a party dress. This example is interesting because, although the process is entirely consumer driven, the involved companies use the technology to add value to the customer, thus achieving a win-win situation. What the involved companies (a retailer and a hairdresser) are doing is establishing customer loyalty by [unordered_list style=”green-dot”] Engaging the customer Providing a superior shopping experience, combining online and offline aspects Enabling the customer to get immediate feedback from their network [/unordered_list] With this the two involved companies manage to align their interests with the customer’s interests. In other words, they are distinguishing themselves through service, instead of price. Trying to achieve loyalty through the offer of “least price” is a surefire way to death. To quote the 1986 Highlander movie: There can be only one. Although the scenario described by Mark sounds very advanced it isn’t. The enabling technologies exist and “just” need to be tied together. We are not talking Star Trek here. I really like this scenario as it depicts what could be. Still, integration is a hard business. Because of this I would like to come forward with another scenario...
by tz4rgp | Dec 3, 2012 | Blog |
Brick-and-mortar retail businesses face a combination of ever-increasing customer expectations, customers being “educated” to expect and receive promotions, and of course an ever increasing competition in the market place for their customers’ share of mind and share of wallet. On top of all this they need to realize that they do not control the communication to their customers anymore, let alone being capable of controlling the communication in between their customers. As many bloggers, including myself, and analysts already stated, the advent of extremely user friendly and ubiquitous mobile devices and web applications essentially decoupled retailers from communications between their customers and even led to their marketing messages becoming part of the “background noise” for lots of consumers – just something one filters out when it comes to getting serious information. Of course there are exceptions, especially considering that retail businesses reacted to this threat. For retailers it is about being where the customers are. This started with setting up transactional web sites (web shops) to drive additional sales, using more and different ways to address customers, e.g. setting up and participating in communities, building fan pages on Facebook, Twitter streams, keeping in touch with exciting new services like Groupon, building capabilities to monitor and participate in discussions in forums, creating loyalty programs, and so on. Quite some of the challenges facing retailers have the potential of being disruptive to their business models. Take Groupon as an example: Groupon is the successful implementation of a scheme that shifts the power balance drastically to the buyer (consumer) side; the scheme is similar to the earlier development of retailer purchase organizations...
