The growth manifesto for the slow economy
we offered last week was a wide-angle framework retailers could use to
prioritize their search for growth in the “new normal” economy. Here’s
what some retailers are doing within that framework, as well as some
independent support and guidance on other aspects of the manifesto from
BMC readers. more
I’ve been in retail a long time, and I believe its time to accept that
for the foreseeable future the economy will grow more slowly than it
used to – and also that it’s time to adopt a new mindset towards growing
retail. So here’s a growth manifesto for a slow economy. It involves
finding better ways to create value for shoppers. This isn’t easy, but
it can be done. In fact, it’s being done now by retailers who are
growing comparable sales at a significantly faster rate than inflation.
Examples include Amazon and many other online retailers, as well as
brick and mortar retailers as diverse as Whole Foods and Dollar General. more
I recently met a young professional who works on the digital side of
brick meets click. His company helps retailers and brands cross over to
connect with shoppers in e-commerce channels, and I asked if he would
talk to me about what the selling landscape looked like from his side of
the street. I read and write a lot about the industry, and I was
impressed with what he had to say. In particular, I am struck by how
much more expansively he sees selling opportunities, and how differently
he defines the term “marketplace.” It includes many more points of
sale than I am used to thinking about. Take a look at the world through
his eyes. Do you see the opportunity I see? more
To gain more insight into the shopping patterns of digital shoppers today, we
sat down for an in-depth interview with a shopper who has shifted the majority
of her purchasing online. Debra is a mom with a full-time job outside the home.
Her husband does the food shopping, and she does the rest of the household's
routine purchasing. By looking at the factors
influencing her shopping, we can see more clearly what both online and brick and
mortar retailers must do to better serve modern shoppers. This is less about
keeping up with the competition and more about understanding and responding to
the shopper. It's important to note that online shopping gave her ways to
address needs that would otherwise have continued to be "latent" and would probably have gone unnoticed, or at least
underappreciated. Check out the ten influences that we
found shaping her shopping behavior. more
We first pointed readers to Andrew Stein's exciting idea for a radically new operating platform for commerce in an April Lookout. Now, we sit down to talk with him about it. The idea, which he first outlined An April 15 SteinVox blog, involves combining customer and merchant data (like the information Groupon collects) to build a platform capable of monitoring and reporting on retail activity in real time. How would real-time analytics change the shopping experience? What would shoppers have to do to to get the benefits? How would the platform benefit merchants? Read on for a peek at what the future of shopping might look like. more
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The growth manifesto for the slow economy
we offered last week was a wide-angle framework retailers could use to
prioritize their search for growth in the “new normal” economy. Here’s
what some retailers are doing within that framework, as well as some
independent support and guidance on other aspects of the manifesto from
BMC readers. more
I’ve been in retail a long time, and I believe its time to accept that
for the foreseeable future the economy will grow more slowly than it
used to – and also that it’s time to adopt a new mindset towards growing
retail. So here’s a growth manifesto for a slow economy. It involves
finding better ways to create value for shoppers. This isn’t easy, but
it can be done. In fact, it’s being done now by retailers who are
growing comparable sales at a significantly faster rate than inflation.
Examples include Amazon and many other online retailers, as well as
brick and mortar retailers as diverse as Whole Foods and Dollar General. more
I recently met a young professional who works on the digital side of
brick meets click. His company helps retailers and brands cross over to
connect with shoppers in e-commerce channels, and I asked if he would
talk to me about what the selling landscape looked like from his side of
the street. I read and write a lot about the industry, and I was
impressed with what he had to say. In particular, I am struck by how
much more expansively he sees selling opportunities, and how differently
he defines the term “marketplace.” It includes many more points of
sale than I am used to thinking about. Take a look at the world through
his eyes. Do you see the opportunity I see? more
We first pointed readers to Andrew Stein's exciting idea for a radically new operating platform for commerce in an April Lookout. Now, we sit down to talk with him about it. The idea, which he first outlined An April 15 SteinVox blog, involves combining customer and merchant data (like the information Groupon collects) to build a platform capable of monitoring and reporting on retail activity in real time. How would real-time analytics change the shopping experience? What would shoppers have to do to to get the benefits? How would the platform benefit merchants? Read on for a peek at what the future of shopping might look like. more
