Showrooming and in-store assistance

Showrooming, the practice of visiting a retail store to see an item only to buy it later from a different retailer online, had a major impact on retailers and has become a major concern for bricks-and-mortar retailers.
Original models to combat this were based solely on lowering prices, promotions and price matching - but battling online retailers on price alone is a losing proposition.

Best Buy was even billing itself as "your ultimate holiday showroom" in its marketing campaign of last Christmas, touting its price-matching guarantee and in-store pickup of online orders.



Social shopping and social gratification

What retailer can do is making the stores more of a "playground" destination with fun in-store events, group discounts, and refer-a-friend programs. There's such a huge opportunity for retailers to link their product showroom appeal with a social experience.

Once, I think it was Martin Luther King, Jr., Martin Luther King said: ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’ – and the same is true for business.

I firmly believe that retailers who deliver a seamless customer experience both in the store and across all channels will emerge ahead of the rest.

Big Data and the cloud

Omni-channel retailing is not just a challenge of handling content and data , but really a challenge of broadness and deepness and its level of detail . Omni-channel requires retailers to handle and merge all interactions whether offline or online or mobile or things in-between where it’s hard to say whether its offline or online like kiosk touchpoints, sensors, ‘ internet of things’ and and and …

The problem for many retailers is not only combining all these data together to form a consolidated view of a customer, but also reacting to it in a timely manner. Consumers are expecting retailers to learn from their interaction so recommendations and offers are personalized. Retailers should look to cloud computing to support their omni-channel strategy as it provides retailers the fastest, most efficient way to bring broad sets of data together in a single, secure platform.

And now I end up again with the topic clienteling.

Customers want to be shepherd with customized, relevant information and support.
60 to 70 % of surveys stress that a more personalized customer experience is the number one thing missing in stores today. But to do so the associates need powerful in-store clienteling applications. The young sales associates are not born with black books under their desks – they were born with smartphones, tablets and app. Their understanding of their job is to provide an efficient and effective shopping experience to every customer and strengthen their loyalty to the brand.
And they are eagerly waiting for powerful clienteling and sales assisting selling tools to quickly learn who his/her top customers, who is most likely to respond to an upcoming promotion, and who is best suited to approach about an upcoming event.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about clienteling  ux4dotcom.blogspot.com/2014/07/clienteling.html

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