Philips has released recently a test of a new technology to geolocate customers in store. In Carrefour Euralille, a new system based on the lights of the store allow customers to locate themselves on their smart phone. You will see below a video showing how the system works. Now I clearly understand the reason why a company like Philips try to push this cutting edge technology in the retail world. I also understand why Carrefour is experimenting new technologies to improve shopping experience and thus the CRM.
But I am quite doubting about the real usage of the technology. Obviously, I believe in Ibeacons and I think the technology has more potential in terms of large usage. But also, I would like to question the use of those technologies in terms of store efficiency. A technology should not be developped because we need technology, but technology should rather complete a need. And so far, I don't see clearly how and why customers would use such a localisation system in store, even if it is very accurate. Nevertheless, I appreciate the fact that an industry leader like Carrefour is able to test and innovate in order to improve customer and shopping experience.
This is a key advice I give to most of the students that come to see me to discuss about my career and how they should embrace one career or another. I have been very fortunate as a student to have great professors that gave me some advices that helped me out achieve what I have achieved so far.
One of the key advice I must give, when they are entering a great master like Paris Dauphine, I always emphasize on learning how to constantly learn rather than on focusing on the courses content of the moment. In our nowadays business world, things evolve fast: technology, sociology, techniques, business trends, countries... That forces the best to always been able to adapt and to seek for the new trends to leverage them in their business.
When I was a student, Myspace was a key component of what we learned, Facebook barely existed, smartphones were impossible to forecast what they become. I have never heard a teacher talking about Alibaba, Uber or the Kindle. What is important is to be able to learn, from people, from news, from your company, what is going on in order to constantly be up to dated.
If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you must know I am discussing a lot about how Ecommerce and brick & mortar retailing are actually merging right now, with emerchants trying to find ways to get concrete locations while brick & mortar businesses are investing a lot on Ecommerce.
The article shows out clear statements which are important to always keep in mind:
Ecommerce is maturing, and most of the historical leaders of the market are struggling to deliver 3 to 4% growth on their domestic market. Actually, aside Amazon, most of the growth in the Ecommerce landscape is brought by brick & mortar competitors online.
Two trends are making pure players struggling online by lowering their profitability: The low price competition (which was the core factor of their growth) added to the cost of acquisition (the money spent on online advertizing). If pure players may have cost advantages on the inventory, real estate & workfore, those strengths are actually lower due to those two main factors.
The web to store is one of the most important growth lever of the moment: If Internet is clearly one of the main source of information during the decision making process, more and more customers tend to finish up their transaction in store.
Even though they invest online, it is difficult for brick & mortar company to buy a pure player: Obviously a company like Carrefour could benefit fast of a purchase of a pure player to develop its market shares. But Ecommerce businesses encounter a lot of speculation which make them difficult pray to get for historical retail tycoons. Especially as traditionnal retailer shares are relatively low compared to their sales. Therefore it is not so obvious to see a retailer like Carrefour or Tesco buying out a Emerchant, even though the strategy could make sense. Nevertheless, why wouldn't they merge?
Once again, the strategical war that is happening at the moment in the retail business is yet to come, and will be very interesting to watch.
Ibeacon's initiatives are blossoming as it brings high expectations in term of customer relationship management and shopping experience. But so far, it looks more like experimentations than actually a game changing technology. Laurence tells us about how Gamestop is testing its beacons in 36 of its stores. Obviously, a great part of the test consist in providing specific deals and content about the video games on the shopper's mobile devices.
But the beacons actually provide details about the customers' habits and preferences in order to customize their advices.
I really like this example because so far Ibeacons have been aimed to generate traffic by proposing discounts once the customer is nearby a store. But I am not convinced yet by what I have seen it is the most efficient way to use the technology, as it will become aggressive and have privacy issues.
But beacons linked to a good SFA software could give a boost to the interractions in store between the sales people and the shopper, and provide an enhance customer experience.
Now that Amazon has such a size, it seems normal if it tries to leverage its power to get the best purchasing conditions possible. It seems also that it is a dominant position. But if you have a close look to the link I posted above, you can clearly see this is not that easy. Indeed, Amazon has earned its market shares thanks to its large choice, especially in books and the new products it proposes. If it decides not to cooperate with companies like the ones listed herein, they will not satisfy customers, lose sales and may help a competitor to get some revenues out of it.
Moreover, when Amazon has new projects to propose new streaming services, it needs those leading companies to set up the best platforms and to provide great content to develop the new category. As a matter of facts, these events show well how interconnected both suppliers and retailers are, and that despite fights which occurs during specific times, both entities need to work together to get the best business.
I love the concept of Costco. Costco is a very specific retailer that have a strong concept, and over the years I stucked to it, and succeed in continuing
This relatively small share comes from obviously the core concept of Costco: A warehouse with big bulk goods with a membership card to own. Far from a pure player business model. Nevertheless, there is a lot of room for growth for Costco online, there is no doubt about it.
But how could Costco make something work online? There is two limits to the two obvious strategy:
First it would be to adapt its business model online, with large bulky products with a membership fee. So far it is how it works, and it is unlikely it can earn great market shares this way.
To adapt its offer to the other competitors offer. But then, I don't really see the point.
I believe there are two strategies that could work pretty well, and that are some of the strategies that work the most at the time:
The flash sales: Costco is great at getting specific deals for a short period of times. That is what they call the "Treasure Hunt". The Internet has experienced tremendous success with such sales, and Costco could benefit from its great pricing to enter this market.
The drive thru: In France, it works great. But by adapting the drive with its concept, with maybe a lot of businesses interested, it could work great. Also, you could get it working with a concept of a subscription concept, in order to ease the order process. Auchan is testing a connected object to order on its online shop, maybe Costco could also have such a service too.
Another post dedicated to the option sometimes taken by retailers to cut down product ranges. I have posted recently about the very same topic. Obviously, the past 20 years, the FMCG product ranges have grown largely, making categories more and more complex to deal with. Nevertheless, I must admit that the more products you own in your product range, the more you sell.
It allows the retailer to cut down the prices, and hence be more competitive. As I have said, product range raise the cost, and could either hurt your profitability but also your pricing. Obviously, it would be tough to go to extreme cut downs like discount specialist Ikea or Costco, but for a hypermart chains, having a lean strategy could help competing.
It allows to cut down out of stocks. Out of stocks are one of the main reasons of unhappiness in store. By having complex and large ranges, you increase the potential sold out items. Therefore, by limiting the ranges, it is easier to keep your store full and attractive.
I would like to add new ones:
It can ease the shopping experience and the merchandizing plan, to give a better lecture of the offer.
It could boost the average sales/months per products, and therefore improve the scoring of certain categories with low rotations.
Now the main issues to face while doing such a move:
Costco, Ikea, Aldi or other discount stores thrive on low prices with low ranges, but a hypermart or a supermart are meant to provide choice. It is one of their competitive advantage. It is wise to study well where and how to cut off without hurting some key category of services with low sales but a high importance in terms of service to customers.
What to do with the extra space? If you have to multiply the facing of products just to fill in the blanks, it would hurt inventory for no reasons. Maybe such a move also should be thought on how you could advertize better, or improve the shopping experience by using the extra space (new technologies, corners with sales people...)
Working better a smaller product range is obviously a risky strategy, but if set up properly for the right reason, it could be very efficient.
This is something that came up in my mind not so long ago: Why Hypermarts company like Carrefour, Walmart, or Géant Casino don't invest in Specialized superstore?
Those hypermarts have thriven on a basic idea: To sell everything under the same roof. It allowed them:
To attract more people interested in doing a one stop shopping
To lower the operationnal costs by working on a large surface
Securing high level of sales as they could serve most of the SKUs of people
By the size of their store they were also able to negociate the best real estate and to capitalize on it to create malls.
But lately, a lot of people are questionning the hypermarts: Too big, to far from downtowns, they seem to turn off customers seeking for new ways to shop. Moreover, the online competition hurt the hardware categories, especially electronics.
But hypermarts have a great asset: They are able to work on all the categories, which give them a great edge:
They master the supply chain: They are able to work on different categories with different kind of issues: FMCG with high rotations and low values, but also high value and low rotations items like TVs or washing machines
They master the real estate: Most of the time they own large real estate, sometimes complete malls, and sometimes they work with different real estate (downtown, malls, train stations...). Therefore, they could be able to leverage even more their real estate by providing a more complete answer by proposing banners in electronics, kitchenware, cultural goods...
They have strong purchasing powers: As they are some of the most important clients to most suppliers, they already own a great purchasing power securing high margins for their soon to come new banners. They could also benefit from their knowledge of the different categories to co create the concept.
It could also be a great way to attract entrepreneurs willing to develop new activitives in the retail business.
The best example: Auchan
Auchan is a French retailer part of what we call the "Galaxie Mulliez": a constellation of retailers owned by the Mulliez familly: Auchan (Hypermarts), Boulanger (electronics), Saint Macloud (Carpets), Décathlon (Sports), Kiabi (Clothes)...
They were able to build their own real estate company (Immochan), hence one they settled an Auchan somewhere, they could fill in the mall with their other retails. But Auchan did not go all the way to the concept. Hence, all those companies have their own purchasing agency, their own boards ,and share little of their operations. I believe that we may seen soon one retailer trying this strategy to expand its growth and positions.
In rare occasions I have topics that link CRM, retail and strategy at the same time, but one of my last readings offered me the opportunity. I had the opportunity to read an old book (see the cover in picture right on the left) edited in 1998 which topic is how the retail business will look like in 2020.
I found it obviously funny to read a book written in the past about our future to see how the prediction is turning. A bit if I was watching back to the future 2 to see how 2015 looked like in 1985... Especially because at this time, Internet was almost not existent, especially in France.
But beyond the amusement point, I liked specifficaly one of the part of this book. You know I have written a lot about Direct Profit by Products as a concrete tool to manage both purchasing and category management. The idea to have a clear view of the true profitability of one product is key to understand how to deal with it. The author is able to talk about DPP linked to CRM.
Indeed, DPP is an old concept, which exists since the 80s. It was developped during an era where product was king: Rotations were high, sales were spiking, and there was no loyalty reward programs launched yet. But the era changed. Customers have taken back the power. Customers are more informed, have more competition to choose from, and obviously he is now the master of the relationship with retailers.
This is what the author explains:
"the profit per product" can not be the sole criterea of profitability. The equation must change. We can't think only products anylonger, but customers budget. The question is where the cusomer budget starts and where it stops. We should hence think about the household budget and propose him complete solutions matching all the specific products that matches a specific needs. Instead of trying to sell a sole tennis rackett, we should propose the balls, the shoes, the tshirt and so on. It could even go beyond that: the insurance, the club fees, video games...".
Now loyalty reward programs allow retailers to have extensive data which could help to define what the direct profit by loyal customers could be. It could also help customers meet the needs of one customers based on this idea.
I believe that this idea indeed could clearly be key in the way both category management and CRM could be managed in the future.
SFR is one of the leading mobile phone network in France. Over the past few years the business model of SFR has evolved a lot based on two facts:
The market became mature, and after a long phase of equipment, SFR is in a market where it needs to fight for its market share.
The arrival of a low cost company Free which hurt its profitability and forced to modify its operation costs modell.
Hence, SFR is trying to modify its retail network in order to adapt to those changes. They recently launched a new concept store, aimed to enhance customer and shopper experience, based on new technologies.
Some of the remarkable ideas:
A lot of screens showing out the options and the usages of the cell phone.
When the customers hold 2 cell phones at a time, the screen show you the comparaison of both modells.
A new after sales service which allows to respond to two customers at a time, which limits the waiting time.
A lot of effort was made on the merchandizing to show clearly the different categories (after sales, cell phones, home equipment...)
The topic is a bit catchy, but people tends to critique a lot Amazon's strategy and inability to deliver profits and deliver dividends to share holders. Indeed, and this is my vision of things, brick & mortar retailers have a bright future ahead of them in the war on the Internet that has already started.
The store network Macy's own, which allows to provide better customer service than a pure player.
The technology Macy has developped to provide great mobile application, up to date in store and online inventory, and to have a better interface with customers.
Scott also remarks that Amazon spent $6.6 billion on delivery and received $3.1 billion in shipping fees, but I don't believe it matters as Amazon has its own business modell, and obviously, Macy's also have costly service it proposes to customers that don't have a direct return on invstment.
Indeed, I believe that Macy's has a bright future ahead of him, for all these reasons, and for sure other brick&mortar will earn a large marketshare of the new Ecommerce world. Nevertheless, we should not understimate Amazon. I know that I have questionned a lot lately their ability to perform on a long term, as they still don't have no profits and don't deliver any dividends. But Amazon has:
A strong brand
A strong customer service and customer relationship
A large market share that will help him keeping an edge on competition
A technology that allows him right now the larger choice on eath on pretty much anything
A robust supply chain, which is efficient and fast to deliver
And still have a lot of rooms in category they are not working yet, or with a lot of room for growth (cosmetic, petfood, dairy products...)
Amazon has a lot of tools to compete and to remain the leader online, but as the article points out, the battle will be rough, and has already started.
J'ai reçu il y a peu le nouveau livre écrits par Olivier Dauvers et Frank Rosenthal, les Incontournables du commerce de demain. L'objectif du livre? Essayer de déterminer les éléments qui vont faire évoluer le commerce dans les années à venir, notamment en regardant les exemples et best practices actuelles.
Le constat du momentum et de la modification profonde du commerce.
Olivier Dauvers nous dresse un constat clair de la consommation: pour faire rapide, la consommation stagne, l'offre commerciale ne cesse de se développer (profondeurs de gamme industriels, m2 distributeurs, sites Internet, qui pousse les distributeurs à rechercher la préférence client, et donc mettre l'accent sur leur marketing.
La mise en avant du marketing, et notamment de la posture enseigne
Dans ce livre est détaillé énormément d'exemples de discours et de communication vers le client pour donner plus de corps au positionnement de l'enseigne, et ainsi créer la préférence client.
Le rappel des fondamentaux inchangeable du commerce: Clairement, le commerce et le retail sont des activités simples, mais avec énormément de détail à régler, et une part importante à la créativité. Commencer le livre par rappeler les fondamentaux (coût outil, l'expérience client, théâtralisation...), et bien spécifier que ceux ci resteront la base du succès d'un concept commercial est effectivement très intéressants.
Les multiples exemples: Chaque partie est argumentée par un nombre très importants d'exemple. Aussi bien internationaux (beaucoup aux US), mais également français. J'aime bien cette partie car je considère effectivement que nous avons la chance en France d'avoir un secteur du retail ultra dynamique et riche en idée, alors que souvent nous nous plaignons de notre manque de créativité. La créativité est là, et ce livre nous en donne la demonstration.
Certains concepts clés, où le livre va plus loin: J'ai appris beaucoup sur les Perkonomics (la manière de créer du service et de la valeur ajoutée à l'expérience client à faible coût) ainsi que sur les systèmes d'abonnements, etc... Aussi, le passage sur les commerces de flux, moi qui suis fan des food trucks et pop up stores, je suis totalement d'accord et friand d'informations à ce sujet.
Ce livre est une excellente source d'inspiration pour trouver des idées sur comment donner de la valeur ajoutée au commerce.
Un excellent livre, qui restera d'actualité pendant pas mal de temps.
A quick blog post about an interesting graph I found on Internet: whathappens online in 60 seconds. What is fascinating is to see the volume of interactions you have in the world thanks to social media. We have never been so interconnected. That also means it is much more difficult to control your image and/or your communication. In this world, it is important to master social media, to embrace the conversation, in order to be able to leverage it as a marketing tool, but also to manage potential crisis.
J'ai eu l'occasion il y a très peu de temps de mettre la main sur une ancienne édition du livre d'Olivier Dauvers, la Saga du Commerce Français. Ce livre, paru en 2004, retrace l'Histoire (et les petites histoires) du commerce français, du lancement par Aristide Boucicaut du Bon Marché, première forme de commerce moderne, jusqu'au lancement du cybermarché avec Télémarket (feu télémarket, puisque le site n'existe plus). Bien évidemment, une nouvelle édition pourrait être remise au goût du jour avec l'avénement du Drive, qui clairement aurait toute sa place parmis les majeurs innovations retracées dans le livre. Liste non exhaustive mais choisie par mes soins:
La création des grands magasin: Le Bon marché
La création du Supermarché
La création des indépendants: U, Leclerc, Intermarché
La loi Royer, et la manière dont elle a modifié les règles du jeu
L'histoire des centrales d'achat
J'adore ce livre. Je l'ai lu en quelques jours, car il est passionnant. Aussi bien les histoires des hommes qui ont fait la grande distribution (je trouve qu'on parle néanmoins peu d'Auchan, qui est quand même l'une des plus belles histoires de la grande distribution), mais également le livre est objectif et lucide sur les rapports qui peut exister notamment entre fournisseurs et distributeurs.
Je pense que le livre, au delà de mon goût pour le retail, pourraît intéressé une vaste majorité de gens intéressé par l'histoire moderne.
Foot traffic is something key in retailing. If customers don't come to your stores, no sales. This is clear generating store visits is key to maintain your sales. This is the reason why new mobile technologies enable new marketing tools to trigger foot traffic: Ibeacons, or applications like Foursquare...
30 retail partners including Orange, Celio or Kase
80 000 downloads
50 000 active accounts
Step In use the beacon technology to send signals to the application holders. Step In hence incentive the visit of one store. If the shopper does not enter the store, he may give some insights on why he has not entered the store (price, choice, the boutique concept...).
To me, one of the most deceiving fact about the whole concept of incentiving the visit to stores is Foursquare. I thought the company had all the tools to master this technique and to show new usage in those terms. The main issue is that a customer is not going to enter if he does not have any clear ideas of what he wants.
Secondly, the issue is about the return on investment. Obviously, a store visit has a real value for retailers. And a retailer able to convert the store visit into sales should try to get as much traffic as he can. But I wonder if in overall the whole concept bring enough value to customers for the retailer to invest in the service and in the customer reward. Because for such a concept to work, I believe that the shopper reward must be clear and really appealing.
Lastly, if by any chance the concept is successful, I believe there is a high risk of seeing some users abusing of the service in stepping in stores just for the reward, without buying anything.
It has been a while I posted an article about brand coaching and also how Bernardo Trujillo, one of the top expert of retailing in the 60s used to leverage it. Bernardo gave to most of retail's trailblazers the essence, and the concept of modern concept of commerce. It did that while trying to convince retailers to buy its cash registeries. Another example I need to discuss is Michelin with his famous restaurant guide.
I am not a store director, and I don't advise you to do this or that. Neither I judge the morality of how retail is developping right now. I am just showing you what is going on in the world. Make any conclusion you want. My only interest is you to be as successful as possible, and that you buy me as much cash registeries as possible to my business.
Amazon is clearly a leader in terms of pricing in the E commerce battle. But obviously, Amazon is a business and needs to earn money. It is therefore impossible to be the cheapest in everything, unless you are the unique competition that you rule, and therefore no discounts are needed to get clientele.
I read an interesting article about that topic. Now it does not provide extensive detail about the whole strategy, or by a really creative approach: Amazon tends to be cheaper on the big runners, to create a great image to shopper, and try to lift their prices on complementary articles that have a cheaper value. But Amazon has an advantage on brick & mortar retailers: it can have a yield management strategy by having different pricing at different time of the day to trigger sales, which is more difficult to set in the traditional retail world.
But perequation is obviously one of the main tool in our nowadays retail world in order to create two impacts:
Generate extra benefits by mastering margins
Attract new prospects by providing attractive prices to customers.
This is the reason why I discuss a lot lately about pricing strategies, as it is an issue that have a lot of innovation ahead of it.
Bernardo Trujillo is one of the most important trailblazer of the retailing business. He was a sales representatives of the NCR, trying to sell the (at the time) high tech cash restiring machines. Because he wanted to sell those new tools, he was setting up seminars in Daytona (Ohio) where he was explaining his vision of modern commerce: self service, large hypermarts, low prices, the importance of cars. They were cold the MMM seminars (Modern Merchandizing Methods).
Bernardo Trujillo was joined in his conferences by some of the most infamous entrepreneurs of the time in the retail business. Founders of now global retailers such as Carrefour, Fnac, Auchan, or Darty went to these seminar prior to launch their businesses.
La jeune rue, pour rappel, c'était ce concept qui consistait à créer une rue commerçante dans Paris autour de thématique spécifique: art de la table et mode. Le projet était ambitieux, puisque son promoteur a du racheter l'intégralité des boutiques de la rue afin de pouvoir proposer une offre commerciale unique, attractive et différenciente, en centre ville. En effet, les centres villes sont de plus en plus intéressants pour le commerce de demain, néanmoins il est difficile de pouvoir piloter toute l'offre. Un centre ville n'est pas géré comme peut l'être un centre commercial par une société immobilière permettant de voir comment créer un pôle de commerce complémentaire en harmonie.
Le projet aujourd'hui est au point mort, et la société Hopshop, dont je ne pense que du bien car dynamique sur le segment du pop up store, a décidé de créer un événement en juillet afin de redonner vie à ce projet.
"Alors, pour relancer la dynamique du quartier, du 4 au 18 juillet prochains HopShop veut installer rue du Vertbois des boutiques éphémères de jeunes entrepreneurs venant de la mode du design ou de la gastronomie ; le tout à loyer zéro. Et pour financer ce projet, la société fait appel au financement participatif via la plateforme KissKissBankBank. Objectif : 28 000 euros. Une somme qui financera également un événement de lancement."
Bonne chance à cette initiative, et je pense que nous entendrons parler très prochainement de la société HopShop sur ce blog.
I like Tony Robbins and his approach of life and human connections. Here is a very interesting video I found that gives you some tips on how to build connections with people. Business, marketing, customer relationship management, is about people and interacting with them. Therefore, those techniques are very efficient and useful at all time.
Mobile commerce has a bright future ahead of it, and we are yet to see how to leverage its potential. When I talk about mobile commerce, I mostly talk about smartphones. Indeed, a lot of the data we have showing the spike of mobile commerce use also the tablet commerce, but to me, both are different. Smartphones are used to do purchases while actually be on the move, whereas tablets are mostly used at home, replacing the usage of a computer. I read this very interesting article of Mc Kinsey on some of the lessons you may have from the mobile retailing boom in South Korea. Obviously South Korea, land of Samsung, is one of the most connected country in the world. Therefore, mobile commerce has been flourishing, and people tend to use more mobiles than computers. Here are the 4 main insights:
1. Reach: Tap into the uniqueness of mobile-first consumers: Users of mobile retailing may have different profiles than your core target.
2. Curate: Trigger impulse purchases through well-crafted offers: Since it's harder to have long lists of products to see on a small screen, you need to adapt the navigation but also the number of SKUs you have. That could actually give a lift to specific retailers with another business model than the standard long tail most Emerchants have.
3. Entertain: Make shopping fun and easy, not just cheap
In contrast to the bargain-hunting mentality that pervades online, mobile
4. Lock in: Capture the loyalty of mobile shoppers early
What I like about the article is that it points out you need to deal with the mobile phone channel differently than you r Ecommerce presence, on all aspects:
Your product range deepness, in order to fit to a faster decision making process
The navigation, and the way people are looking at products. Actually there is a large opportunity into this one. As the article says, you may shop in a smaller number of mobile websites, which creates higher loyalty.
The way you deal with your customer relationship management
The way you may deliver: Probably proximity may be different while on the go than at home.
