Best of both worlds

30.01.12 | Damian Horner

The retail world is reeling from the double whammy of a global crisis and a simultaneous lurch towards e-commerce across all sectors. The new buzzwords in retail strategy are “Omnichannel”, “Next Best Offer” and “Experiential Advantage”:

Omnichannel The ability of retailers to engage with customers across multiple channels; ranging from physical stores to kiosks, social media, websites, networked hardware and so on. The belief is that retailers must be able to integrate a myriad of touchpoints into a seamless experience or they will be left for dead.

Next Best Offer Retailers using granular data, demographics and purchasing behaviour analytics to “anticipate” the right offer at the right moment for the right consumer—often before customers even know they want it. In essence this is all about truly customised offers, and 2012 is going to see this on a massive scale.

Experiential Advantage This is where bricks-and-mortar retailers re-invent the in-store experience. They accept that e-commerce retailers will always kill them in terms of price and information delivery—so instead they re-imagine and maximise the benefits of face-to-face contact. Apple’s “Genius Bar” is a great example.

So lots of MBA concepts to give retailers a road map for survival. In simple terms, this is all about retailers finally recognising that they can no longer be “One or the Other”—a bricks-and-mortar retailer or an e-commerce site. The way forward is to merge the very best of both the online and physical store experiences. Independents might think that this leaves them screwed. Surely all this is far too big and expensive for them to be able to compete?

Well, in a weird way, the indies are in a great position to exploit these shifts. Their small size, their detailed product knowledge and their strong customer relationships give them a much more manageable context for development than the major chains.

Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath is a cracking example of a shop that is pushing hard in both the online and offline worlds. To one extreme it has its Reading Spas, author events and reading groups; on the other it has an e-newsletter, a blog, more than 2,000 Twitter followers and a fully functioning retail website. All this from a shop that is sited in a tiny backstreet behind a major Waterstones.

This is leading edge stuff, but Mr B’s weakness—like that of all independents—is that they cannot compete in the arena of e-books. Many may emulate Mr B’s other innovations, but how to sell e-books is the biggest problem that indies have to crack in 2012. Currently they are dancing with Google, but the longer they delay in reaching an accord, the more ground they lose. This is make or break time. Let’s hope that the BA can step up to the plate.
 

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