By Evan Schuman
Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a recent article from StorefrontBacktalk.com, a retail technology and E-Commerce blog, presented here for discussion.
American consumers walking around shopping malls this holiday season will start to see the first visible signs of retail merged channel strategies. All kinds of hooks into - and from - online, cell phones and call centers will start to percolate through store aisles and checkout lanes.
But in what could be called the Boomerang Strategy, what consumers will see in-store this season will be quite far removed from the utopian epitome of merged retail channels, with the customer shopping through whichever channel is most convenient and store management apathetic about that customer choice.
No, what stores will be doing is using non-in-store technologies to get consumers into the stores and to make them buy in-store only. In effect, to boomerang them from in-store to the web (or mobile) and then back into the store. It's the retailer's paraphrased version of the AAA pledge: "What you see here, what you hear here, what you want to buy here, stays and gets paid for here."
Consider:
- Some Wal-Mart customers fighting among the throngs for that special something
this season will find themselves with an edge, if they have their cell phone
with them. Customers who opt-in will get text messages alerting them to short-duration
(typically about one hour long) sales on a handful of merchandise. The alerts
may come in through the phone, but it's only good for in-store purchases.
The people providing that Wal-Mart service - Air2Web - are doing similar
mobile in-store projects for Sam's Club, Office Depot, Dominos and Footlocker
- In Madison, Wisconsin, customers of the Fair Indigo clothing store - the latest project of the former Lands' End E-Commerce wizard, Bill Bass - will be able to walk into a store and grab an item off the shelf. The customer will be able to walk over to a kiosk, have the apparel's barcode scanned and instantly see all of the online user comments about that product. "Online customer reviews are something that our audiences love," said Mr. Bass, the store's CEO.
On the other hand, perhaps an example of poor merged-retail channel strategy is Starbucks, which virtually pioneered the social network concept long before MySpace or Facebook became household names - yet didn't bring any of that along to its website. The site sells coffee makers and a few jazz CDs but offers nothing in the way of community building.
Last week, Starbucks announced a rare drop in same-store sales. While Wall Street blamed store saturation and Starbucks cited "price increases due to rising milk prices" theory, the troubles could be the coffee chain's absolute refusal to do virtually any merged channel strategy. Could Starbucks be learning that man doesn't live by bricks alone?
Discussion Questions: Do you think the retail industry is finally realizing the benefits of merged-retail platforms? What "boomerang" efforts have you seen particularly work well? Which have the most potential down the road?