Source – www.retailwireblog.com
Whether due to snowstorms, mall-madness phobia, e-deals, or an improved shopping experience, e-commerce delivered what many saw as surprisingly strong results this past holiday season. What lessons should online and multi-channel retailers be taking away from this holiday season?
MY COMMENTARY:
We need to see e-commerce, mobile-commerce and bricks-and-mortar retailing as a seamless phenomena, all connecting a retailer with their customers. The “big dog” in the coming retail world will be the retailer(s) that learn to SELL online (not just accept orders) and continues the conversation on an iPhone, a PDA, or other mobile internet device, and then brilliantly uses the bricks-and-mortar experience to enhance and multiply sales.
This brings us to the big question, not of holding the line on sales, or even eating more of the competitive pie, but of actually having a much larger retail pie to eat from. A couple years ago, I wrote a white paper on “Five Reasons Your Store Might Sell Five Times as Much.” It is a costly mistake to think that consumers, globally, have peaked out in consumption. Of course this is nonsense for the developing world, that is just getting started. But it is nonsense in every developed market as well.
One of the simple reasons you might sell five times as much in your stores is that shoppers WANT TO BUY MORE!!! Retailers have created more impediments to selling than they imagine. The demand is there, the integration of the three retail modalities–e-commerce; mobile commerce; bricks-and-mortar–will drive massive increases in sales in the years ahead. The “frictionless marketplace” that Glenn Terbeek envisioned will arrive, with many of the elements he foresaw.
About the Author
Dr. Herb Sorensen - Guest Blogger for Phenomena
Dr Herb Sorensen is global scientific director of shopper insights at TNS Sorensen.Since the late 1970s his market research has focused on shoppers at their points of purchase. TNS Sorensen, the in-store research company®, captures shopper behaviour, motivations and perceptions at the point of purchase.
Dr. Herb Sorensen,
TNS Sorensen
http://insidethemindoftheshopper.com/
herb.sorensen@tns-sorensen.com
Twitter: herbsorensen
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