From Single Channel to Omni-Channel

Whats happening in the world of Retailing

1. Groupon - daily deal site is gaining popularity each day with better deals and more redemptions. It has now expanded in India, Israel, Malaysia and South Africa
2. Facebook is letting marketers be more and more innovative through the use of its site. Recent example, Facebook lets marketers turn consumers interaction (comments) be turned into ads, Marketers acknowledge learning a lot about their products from facebook discussions.
3. Marketers are dubious about the quality of their customer data/information even though they have a documented data quality strategy
4. Online retail sales to increase at an average rate of 10% from 2010 to 2015 and will reach $280 billion dollars in US by 2015.
5. Free shipping is a standard option for retailers with minor variations
6. Oracle buys ATG for almost 1 billion dollars cash, with this Oracle will get to strengthen its back-end retail services like customer relationship management, order management and supply chain management.

(Innovation) News from the retail industry

MyShape attracts nearly one million female shoppers looking for the right fit

Consumers get a kick out of Shoebuy’s flash-sale site

eBay teams up with the National Federation of the Blind

1-800-Flowers offers guidance for consumers in grief

Outsourcing its web platform lets Nambé focus on brand-building

The Lighting experts

I would love to see a lighting online retailer such as http://www.bulbs.com/ in India. Five reasons why it would do well are:

1) Hardly any dissemination of lighting knowledge from bulb manufacturers to consumers.
2) Hardly any online store that sells bulbs.
3) Huge customer base (business customers) who would like to benefit from choice and price.
4) Huge energy wastage due to lack of awareness of energy-efficient bulbs and therefore savings on electricity costs.
5) One-stop place for all varieties of bulbs.

Drop Ship Vendors

Its a concept that is catching up especially with web and catalog based companies. Its helps them save on inventory costs in 2 ways. One they don't have to pay for space, second it takes away the guessing part of the inventory.

These drop-ship-vendors are benefited by way of fixed orders from retailers and retailers are benefited by less operating costs. There are software's available to manage such drop-ship-vendors that are automated enough to send shipment tracking paths to retailers who in turn pass it on to consumers. This way retailers know for sure that these vendors have shipped items from their warehouse.

Groupon's national coupon

Groupon went national for a day and sold 441,000 gift vouchers in a day. Thats a record for a relatively new company.

Groupon is an intermediary between retailers and consumers. It lists one deal everyday on its site. The deals are generally highly discounted, so consumers benefit. For retailers its brand equity and they don't loose out too, since they only execute the deal if they get an "X" number of sales.
The speciality of groupon is it is city based, so if you are in Burbank area, you get deals in Burbank.

This business proposition is good for anyone in a country where such businesses don't exist.

E-commerce sales is picking up steam

American departmental store Kohl's and ranked amongst top 25 retailers in US, reported more than 50% increase in e-commerce in the second quarter, while its comparable store sales increased only by 4.6%.

This shows the tremendous benefit of having e-commerce as a major channel for shopping. Major vendors are also coming up with products that are specific to e-commerce thus creating a brand pull for online consumers.

Social Fans More Likely to Buy - eMarketer

Social Fans More Likely to Buy - eMarketer

Mobile Retailing

NRF has come out the most comprehensive report on Mobile retailing. You can either read the executive summary or download the whole report here.

There is no doubt that mobile retailing will be one of the most preferred means for transactions amongst the 4 retail channels , but NRF's prediction that it will capture about 8% of the total e-commerce market by 2015 is a bit optimistic but its best to wait and watch.

The Android OS and iPhone OS are clearly leading the pack and with its rich user interface and million applications, and these will help take mobile retailing to the next level.

Countries such as Germany, Denmark, Japan are already piloting successful projects wherein consumers can check out of stores directly after stocking what they need while payments are automatically debited through their mobile phones. Also mobile phones are used to generate alerts whenever a consumers passes through items on sale or items that are required for making their favourite dish.

The possibilities are endless and it will be exciting to see which technology companies will lead the pack in developing or co-ordinating the acceptance of global standards for mobile transactions.