Tesco, the large British retailer, recently announced one of the largest losses in British corporate history recently. Much of the loss was attributable to property write downs as a result of a recognition of changing consumer shopping habits the retailer had failed to adapt to in recent years. The company has new leadership which is orchestrating a turnaround. Donal MacDaid, in Talking Retail, summarized the key...
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Managing your consumer experience journey must be one of, if not the core tenet of your strategy as a retail marketer. It is no longer acceptable to to be reactive to the journey your customer takes to learn about, and hopefully buy, your product. As a retail marketer, you must be proactive about shaping the consumers’ path to purchase. How do you shape a consumers’ path...
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We all know the forces of the past decade - search, social, mobile, Amazon - are changing every industry. But consumer-facing commerce has been at the tip of the spear, as empowered consumers are now in the driver's seat and forcing brands and service providers to change quickly and dramatically to keep up. Forrester research calls this era the "Age of the Customer", and encourages...
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Ninety percent of all sentiment on social media around loyalty programs is negative, according to a recent CapGemini study. Combine that reality with the fact that most households are in 15+ legacy loyalty programs already and the tectonic shifts in how consumers are shopping and purchasing today, and it's clear every company must rethink customer loyalty. The first place to start is the idea that only...
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In a recent Harvard Biz article, Peter Merholz relates the trend at checkout toward Square and the Apple Store-type experiences to farmers' markets and food trucks. Consumers want to tear down the barriers between the shopper and the merchant. They want the farmers market, not the supermarket. They want the food truck, not the restaurant, and at checkout, they'd rather remove the big clunky cash register in...
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Omnichannel. Omnichannel. Omnichannel. It’s the buzzword of the retail industry right now. But one woman, Andrea Weiss, co-founder of The O Alliance, says we should “stop thinking about omnichannel, and think about circular commerce.” That quote comes from this article. The author goes on to say she was “referencing the idea that each channel should feed into one another versus operate as separate silos and that...
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