Marketing Trends - New Generation Retailers
By Shilpi Sharma Posted December 17, 2014 In Retail, Industry Trends
Time consumers spend on a Web sites build stronger relationship between brands and consumers especially on Holiday Season’s like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Thanksgiving day. Retailers are also taking next step towards technology or being more digitized to provide better service to customers.
As article by media post Time Spent On Retail Sites Key To Building Strong Bonds Between Brands, Consumers, talks about a recently conducted research which said that Amazon has become the very appealing spot for online shoppers, dominating more than a 30% share of total time spent on shopping sites as consumers explored and researched products Research said that in an aggregate, all retailers published more than 3,600 pieces of content on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts which accounted for increase in volume of sales during the first week of Dec, which included Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Promotions works well with omni channel strategy. Specific landing pages to any promotion also make consumers feel welcomed and channel their focus to the deals a brand is providing during the promotion.
Talk about Black Friday, Due to flood of online orders, Marks & Spencer experienced delays delivering customers’ online orders on Black Friday as article posted by Internet Retailer - U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer struggles to handle a surge in Black Friday orders. Customers are not currently able to place in-store click-and-collect orders for the next day, while standard deliveries to home addresses which takes about 5 days to deliver is now taking as long as 10 days. Due to this, the retailer faced lot of complaints on their Facebook page.
This truly highlights the need of a decision science engine for retailer so that they optimize end to end experience in real-time (from promotion to fulfillment).
Retailers are moving towards becoming more digital, as article posted by Internet Retailer- Nordstrom tests web-connected digital mirrors in store dressing rooms talks about how Nordstrom Inc. is adding a dash of digital connectivity to some of its store fitting rooms. The department store chain in their 2 stores is adding interactive mirrors. This will provide shoppers product recommendations and access to in-store inventory information as they try on clothes. This feature will truly bring technology and web features into its stores.
It would be fascinating to predict the behavior of a shopper who is trying on these clothes using the digital mirror, and close the sales by providing customized promotion based on CLTV & other via digital mirror.
Another retailer Staples, introduced Staples Exchange with the goal of running its own online marketplace, as posted by Internet Retailer Staples moves toward building an Amazon-like web marketplace. Staples Exchange is a custom-built, drop-ship platform that allows suppliers to more easily upload their products for sale to consumers on Staples.com. It will also provide better order tracking and greater visibility into product inventory to the e-retailer. Staples is also reducing its physical store and expanding its e-commerce presence.
Amazon pretty much defines the baselines for online marketplaces, every other marketplace generally follows the strategy. It would be interesting to watch how these new entrants like Staples redefines the baseline and bring innovation that teaches one or two new thing to Amazon.
To capitalize on a growing mobile audience, the Dafiti Group, fastest-growing fashion e-retailers in Brazil is using Apple’s location-based iBeacon technology. As article by Internet Retailer How a fashion e-retailer uses Apple’s iBeacon technology to reach shoppers in Brazil, talks about it. This will help in better personalized offerings and mobile notifications to shoppers. “We want to increase the relevance of our mobile platforms with our customers and make the use of mobile devices an even more convenient shopping experience,” says co-founder Malte Huffmann.
Emerging economies generally leapfrog in terms of adoption of technology. New & sophisticated technology to collect consumer data bring the innovation to marketing and advertising measurement.
Neiman Marcus, another retailer is also bridging the digital and brick-and-mortar worlds with "Snap. Find. Shop”, as posted by Retailwire, Will Neiman Marcus' customers snap, find and shop?. It is a -D search and purchase tool that allows consumers to capture images of fashion items and receive similar products available on the Neiman Marcus e-commerce site. This is currently available within the shoe and handbag departments, Snap. Find. Shop. will expand to new categories in the near future.
Visual search is still in nasacnt stage but in future this would become the most prominent way of searching information in real-time and products like Google glass would make it happen.
New ideas & new technologies bring challenges especially when it comes to measurement. Feel free to share your ideas and comments with us. We love to hear what are you doing at your company and if we can help someway.
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