In April 2017, DAC Group, a prominent global Marketing agency, asked if I would like to give my thoughts on their upcoming Whitepaper. The topic: what is customer-first retail, and how do you even try and achieve that while staying relevant and driving business results in today’s ever-evolving retail landscape? Great topic and I was also impressed with the other people I would be giving opinions with. Here is a list of the people that were interviewed for this Retail Whitepaper:
Diane Brisebois, President & CEO at Retail Council of Canada
Indar Chanicka, Director of eCommerce at The Body Shop
Pat Duncan, SVP Marketing & Chief Digital Officer at Party City
Tom Giacalone, Digital, eCommerce, Omnichannel Retail and Operations, CRM Executive at Vera Bradley
Johnny Russo, Associate Vice-President, eCommerce and Digital Marketing at Mark’s (that would be moi)
Jennifer Spencer, VP Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at The Body Shop
Jan Steck, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Helzberg Diamonds
Diane’s name attaches immense respect and retail authority, and she is someone I follow very closely. Thanks to DAC Group for putting out this Whitepaper, and for asking me to be a part of it. I love being a part of advancing retail and helping Digital Transformation journeys.
The whitepaper explores how retailers can reinvigorate their approach to digital in order to overcome immense challenges, unlock opportunities, and drive measurable ROI in a competitive space. The main topics include:
- The necessity of shifting to a customer-centric approach
- The paramount importance of the personalized customer experience
- Omni-Channel strategies driving brand success
- Mobile and Ecommerce continuing to grow exponentially
- The “Amazon Effect” heavily influencing consumer expectations
“It’s evident that people think the retail apocalypse is happening. However, it’s equally apparent that some brands are responding to changing consumer demands, and those that do will ‘win’ at the end of the day,” says Lynn Duffy, DAC Group’s Senior Manager, Strategic Insights. “It seems like such a basic concept, but keeping the consumer at the forefront in all decisions that impact how brands interact with the consumer will pay off in the end.”
Here are some of my quotes in the Customer-First Retail Whitepaper, which was published in June 2017:
More Than One Reason Why Retailers May be Struggling
The fact of the matter is that retail stores are shutting down at an alarming rate. This has been one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades. Is it solely because of the shift in shopping behavior, with consumers moving from brick-and-mortar to online retail channels? Could it be that some retailers failed at staying up-to-date on current retail trends and adapting fast enough in response? Is there a leadership gap? Is it the glut of choices and accompanying sameness therein, or are consumers simply just not as interested as they once were?
“I haven’t necessarily heard a common reason on why all these retailers have closed. I think they each managed differently. And for various reasons (way more than just one) they went under”, said Johnny Russo, Associate Vice-President, eCommerce and Digital Marketing at Mark’s. He hypothesized that a leadership gap may, indeed, exist: “Is that a leadership gap? Are they spending money in the wrong places? Hard to say without being in their shoes at that moment in time. But I don’t think it’s just one reason.” Diane Brisebois, on the other hand, firmly believes that stores are closing as a direct result of the boring, uninspiring experiences provided by some retailers.
Brick and Mortar (Physical) Stores Are Still Important to Consumers
Here’s one thing that retail experts seem to agree on: having a physical presence is still important for retailers. Several of our panelists agreed that people still want to interact with the physical store.
Specifically, Russo says: “I think the successful retail companies are going to have a store footprint. They’re going to have a solid digital platform, but they’re going to have a store foundation, and I think the ones that get that combination right are going to win. Stores are not getting less relevant and digital is not getting less relevant. They’re both going to work together to stay relevant.”
Personlization Should Be More Than Just a Buzzword
Creating a personalized customer experience is not easy. Russo believes that the three elements required for personalization are:
“I think to get personalization right, you need to understand your market really well. I think you also need solid content. Personalization is not easy when you only have a few pieces of content. The third aspect of that is technology: how do you serve the content that these individuals or visitors will see? I think where some people or some companies have made a mistake is really going at personalization without a content strategy,” explained Russo.
The Primary Goal of Omni-Channel Retail
Russo defines Omni-Channel as an approach that eliminates channels: “When you look at Omni-Channel, it’s really about eliminating the channels, for the customer anyway. The customer just looks at the brand independent of channels. They could use one, three, or five channels. It doesn’t really matter to them as long as they’re dealing with the brand and it shouldn’t matter to the retailer either.” To stand apart, retailers must drill down to the hyper-local level – building out local digital experiences that integrate seamlessly with individual locations and pages. This goes for everything from the foundational importance of accurate and compelling physical location data to experiential content online.
The Retail Industry Needs to do a Better Job Adapting to Change
Although some retailers have been trying to stay one step ahead of the game, there is still room for improvement. “I think the industry must do a better job of handling this technology-meets-strategy-meets-fulfillment-meets-consumer ideology or what they’re looking for in a brand and how they shop,” said Russo.
How can retailers continue to thrive in today’s retail environment? Our experts agree that it comes down to your digital/mobile strategy: How you organize yourself around a digital-first/mobile-first strategy will be a pretty big determinant of whether you’re going to succeed down the road.
The Future of Retail is Adaptation to Customer Wants
Showrooming, the practice of browsing for products in-store but purchasing the product online, at a lower price in most cases, has been a huge trend over the past couple of years. Another trend that is really taking off is webrooming, which is the opposite of showrooming: it is when consumers research online and purchase in-store. According to an article by Marketing Land, 2016 was the year of webrooming.
“I think both webrooming and showrooming have the potential to get larger. We see showrooming and webrooming as very important parts of retail’s future because, again, the customer will dictate how to shop, and retailers will adapt. The future of retail is adaptation… adaptation to the customer wants,” remarked Russo.
The full Whitepaper can be downloaded here:
Customer-First Retail – a Whitepaper by DAC Group
You can also see the write-up and share the link from the DAC website.
I was also featured recently on Hilton Barbour’s blog, giving my thoughts on Digital and Cultural Transformation.
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