Timing Management in retailing

This is a real trend I would like to follow in 2015: How to optimize sales for a retailer upon two axis:

- The Time of the day.

- The location of the Store

Indeed, I believe that there is a lot of room for growth for retailers which are able to master these two components.

How to optimize those two axis:

The time of the day.

You need to match the time of the day with the bid you propose to customers. One of the great example I have is Mc Donald's in France. Hence, they have specific concepts and products they propose depending on the time of the day. They have the Mc Morning offer in the morning, based on orange juice, coffee and egg muffin, the "Cass Croute" Menu, which is a short version of a classic menu to eat on the go, the Mc Café concept with pastries in the afternoon, and obviously their orignal offer at night time. Hence, they are able to sell all day long, and hence maximize sales at the restaurant. 

Retailers should be able to have such a timing management technique, to provide specific bid in specific locations of the store in order to maximize sales. 

The location of the store:

You need to match the location of the store specificities with the bid. This is all the pop up stores you may find, the food truck that goes where the customers are, depending on the season or the time of the day. 

Indeed, I am sure we will see soon more and more pop up stores appear in location with high traffic, such as train station,post offices, downtowns, stadiums, parkings, or malls. Why not even see in malls some specific stores that may change every months depending on the seasonnaility of the brand, and maybe even to adapt during the same day?

I believe that retailing will need to be more flexible to be efficient. But beyond the geolocalization data you may have, beyond your customers segmentation, you should also be flexible around the timing of the day and where you may meet the clientele in order to lift sales. A lot of things are going on on this topic right now.

8 Trends That Will Shape Retailing In 2015

As the new year is starting, it is the time to make some forecasts and predictions on what the unfolding year will be about. I found this very interesting article which comments 8 trends that will be key in the retailing world for next year.

1. Mobile payments (in particular Apple Pay)

Mobile payments have officially launched, and retailers have mostly Apple Pay to thank. But some retailers—​notably those involved in the group developing CurrentC, which has yet to be launched but has already suffered a hack—have at least toyed with not accepting Apple Pay.

But that would probably be a mistake. The inward focus of CurrentC’s development could easily be the basis of its downfall. Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and others, for that matter, use NFC systems that many retailers already have in place. (Remember, those eschewing Apple Pay, in fact, said they were disabling their NFC technology.) It stands to reason, especially with Apple Pay getting good reviews from users so far, that retailers with NFC should want to accommodate the customers who want to buy things with Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Yet right now, many can't (or won't).

Ultimately, refusing to take Apple Pay and other NFC-enabled mobile payments is likely to do retailers more harm than good. 

2. Mobile shopping

Mobile shopping really hit its stride at the end of the year to many retailers’ surprise. For the first half of the year though, mobile web and apps were notoriously hard to use and discouraged customers. Marketing personalization company Monetate found that m-commerce “skyrocketed” on Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year, with 44% of Thanksgiving Day’s online traffic coming from mobile and 42.5% of Black Friday’s online traffic coming from mobile.

Still, desktop users converted at an 82% higher rate than mobile users, according to data from omnichannel marketing firm Sailthru's Trust in Technology survey of holiday data. They also found that most email was coming to consumers via their smartphones, a bit of a disconcerting disconnect that could indicate that retailers are not quite ready for mobile the way their customers are.​

Consumers are clearly ready to shop and transact on mobile, and retailers must get ready for that if they aren’t already.

3. Pop-ups

These days, retailers of all types and sizes are experimenting with the pop-up concept. Nordstrom, seemingly ready to shed its staid upscale reputation, has jumped on the store-within-a-store approach. And e-commerce retailers are using pop-ups to expand their reach and give consumers a first-hand look at their goods. Jewelry e-retailer BaubleBar, for example, says it has expanded its pop-ups because they drive sales. 

PopUp Republic has taken on the difficult task of defining and quantifying pop-up retail, and its study found that pop-ups, as the company defines them, are taking in some $50 billion annually. 

Ten years ago these shops were a way for retailers to cheaply find space without commitment, and for landlords to fill up dead spaces with temporary leases. Back then, no one thought the idea would last. But now, retailers from e-commerce to traditional brick-and-mortar are using pop-ups to entice customers, provide retail “experiences,” shake up staid images, and manage partnerships and product lines. They're here to stay and something to consider for retail businesses large and small. 

4. Shipping, Delivery, and Pickup

A little bit buried in the success of e-commerce and m-commerce over the big Thanksgiving holiday weekend is the fact that a lot of the retailers enjoying that success are traditional brick-and-mortar types. Target, Best Buy, and a slew of other retailers have drastically lowered or eliminated their minimums for free shipping and are offering in-store and curbside pickup.

In select cities, the delivery battles are especially heated, with services like Google, Deliv, and others providing same-day service from stores and malls.

While same-day delivery is still essentially experimental, cheap or free shipping is increasingly a consumer expectation. Target and Best Buy may find that they can’t go back on their shipping policies very easily in the new year. But those retailers still charging a lot for shipping or not offering some kind of possibility for reduced shipping are way behind, and probably inviting their customers to abandon their shopping carts at checkout. 

5. Minimum wage increases and working conditions

November’s elections saw a wave of success for Republicans, but also for a decidedly less right-wing issue: hiking the minimum wage. Raising hourly pay has been a topic of discussion in Washington, in many state capitals, and in several cities. Five states, San Francisco, and Chicago have all succeeded in passing measures to do so. 

It's not just wages, though. Retail employees’ working conditions have also become an issue — and San Francisco has already taken that on, passing a “Retail Worker Bill of Rights” this month that is unprecedented in scope. The law addresses erratic scheduling and requires retailers to pay for time when workers are on call or face last-minute changes. Retailers will also be required to give part-time workers more hours before hiring more staff. The law affects retail chains that have at least 20 locations nationally, including about 5% of the city’s workforce. Seattle voters last year​ approved a similar law requiring businesses to offer more hours to part-time employees before hiring additional workers, and Rep. George Miller from California has introduced a similar bill in Congress.

These two issues are growing concerns, and retailers should take a good look at the fairness of their pay and scheduling. Not only will it help them prepare for possible policy changes ahead; many retail experts say it could also helpboost their own bottom lines. 

6. The demise of Black Friday

Let’s face it, Black Friday is a shadow of its former self. Not only did Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday intrude, but retailers had been announcing special deals for days and weeks before. Amazon began its “Black Friday” deals a week ahead of the holiday. And while Wal-Mart Stores stretched out its “New Black Friday” from Thursday to Cyber Monday, it similarly began advertising “pre-Black Friday” deals a good week before Thanksgiving. 

Retailers should probably find another way to spin the holiday shopping season. “Special” isn’t feeling very special anymore. 

7. Alibaba

Alibaba looms large in everyone’s mind, but despite its massive IPO and increasing global reach, it may not come near dominating its U.S. rivals. For one thing, the company will continue to be under great pressure to further curtail counterfeit sales. But Alibaba is no longer just huge, it’s also massively rich. Retailers this month told Congress that it must close the e-commerce tax loophole in order to rein the Chinese retail giant in. 

One thing that Alibaba, like Amazon,​ is unafraid of is being disruptive. Both retailers try things and fail quite often, but find successes along the way. Of course, Alibaba certainly can afford to do so.

8. Retail data breaches

In October next year, retailers will have a very good reason to update their point-of-sales systems and boost their security: they pretty much have to. 

But when Target's 2013 retail data breaches and Home Depot’s massive breach in September were scrutinized further, they were both found to be highly preventable with existing technology and knowledge.

Cyber-forensics experts found the theft could have been avoided if Target had followed its own established protocols, and Home Depot actively ignored warnings from its own IT department for years. No amount of tech upgrades can make up for that kind of slack.

If you follow my blog, you will probably have noticed that much of the articles I am publishing are linked to these topics. I believe there is a trend though that has not been mentionned: The attack of brick&mortar retailers on the E commerce market. International expansion is slowing down now in emerging markets, and I believe there will be a lot of actions going on of industry leaders like Walmart, Carrefour among others to get marketshares from an Amazon which a lot of people are questionning its strategy.

Some Thoughts On How You Measure Influence on Social Media

It has been a while I wanted to share with you this very interesting article of Techcrunch. The article questions the way people apprehend who are influencers on social media, and how we recognize them. Indeed, one of the first way brands and companies are targeting influencers are the number of people who follows them, and how many of them retweet or reply to their posts. Obviously, by doing so, you focus on the ability of one message to grow and to have a large audience. But does it really mean these people are influencial?

Indeed, in terms of marketing, is it enough to have people allowing you to grow your audience of a specific message? Does it really implies that it will lead to more business?

Social influence scores, such as Klout, measure how likely the Facebook fans of Mitt Romney are to engage and share his updates with the rest of their social media friends. However, given that many followers of Romney are already die-hard Republicans, would they have already seen a video he shares on the Drudge report anyway? If Romney solicits his followers for money, would they have already contributed through another website? In other words, social friends are sheep-like: they read the same articles, download the same apps, and give money to the same causes and politicians. Aral says that caring about high follower count could be a “waste of money” if so-called “influencers” are not actually changing behavior. According to the paper, it turns out that follower counts and retweets may be much less important than demographics, such as age, personality type, and gender in determining who is influential and who’s susceptible to social media manipulation.

One of the obvious issue, is to check at brand fanned on Facebook. The brands that are more liked are luxury ones, whereas we all know those brands are niche market ones, meaning they have very few clients. Does having a large number of followers imply more business with the few that are real clients? 

Probably, one of the best way to really see what impact social media have on sales would be to identify customers with their social media accounts, but this is not really yet the case. 

Thanks to the big data, the large number of users, soon we'll be able to have a clearer view of how social media impact sales, and the way people consume. It will be very interesting to follow.

Retailers Lead America Most Inspirational Companies.

A lot of people favorited my Tweet not too long ago about America's Most Inspiring Companies. Indeed, whereas most of the people may believe that Tech companies or big brands (which actually lead the board of the most known brands in the world) like Coca Cola are not at the top. Except for n°1 Tesla, the electric car manufacturer, the to 5 is constituted by only retailers:

1- Tesla

2- Trader Joe's

3- Target

4- Tom's Shoes

5- Costco

What does that show? To me, that shows retailers as they are close to customers and hence to people, they tend to be more appreciate than other brands. That shows out the proximity one retailer may have, especially brick&mortar ones.

Whole Food Market Uses Digital Technologies To Improve Shopping Experience

Whole Food Market is one of the most modern concept in retailing these past few years.

They have recently added to their concept 4 new screens which enhance shopping experience.

It is always interesting to see what augmented reality and new technology may improve shopping experience, and create differenciation in a very competitive retail world.

10 Ways To Improve Your Well Being In 2015

It is the beginning of the year, so the perfect time to work on good resolutions. I found this interesting article, that may help you out find the right resolutions to feel better both professionnaly and personnaly. I believe I am going to myself stick to these principles as I agree with them.

FOR YOUR BODY

1. Get a better night’s sleep. 

2. Hold off on the coffee. 

3. Get some exercise in. 

4. Take a deep breath. 

5. Eat lunch away from your desk. 

FOR YOUR MIND

6. Let go of perfectionism. 

7. Scrutinize your meetings. 

8. Stop working late

9. Stop glorifying overwork. T

10. Put your headphones on. 

The Real Costs Of Social Media Marketing

Here is an infographic I found on the website of Percolate about the real cost of social media marketing. 

It gives a pretty clear view about how much each components of a social media campaign costs. What is not put into prospectis is the reach you may have with this strategy. These figures are based on the Nestlé marketing campaigns, and I believe that depending on the size of your company, and foremost the size of your online community, the cost/reach will be very different from one account to another. Anyways, I would also like to see the comparaison between these figures and traditionnal media such as radio, TV etc... to see actually what is the most cost efficient.

Some thoughts about « La Jeune Rue » In Paris

The project may not be known on an international stage, but it is famous in France. AFrench entrepreneur has undertaken a big project named la Jeune Rue. The project was to buy the commercial real estate of a whole street in France in order to transform a neighbourhood previously going in limbo into one of the hypest place for foods, restaurants and entertainment.

The entrepreneur set partnership with famous names of the design, and culinary world. The project has been difficult to launch, as it requires massive amount of money, combined with a lot of time to define the commercial offer it will have.

For some months now people are questioning where the project is heading, as investors and some people who worked in the project don’t have clear answer when the project will be achieved. A lot of rumors are roaming about the entrepreneur, how much money he actually has, and if the project is still on.

I am not here to discuss about how the project is undergoing as I don’t have much information. I just wanted to share with you my vision of the project. I believe this is just a great project that must have a future.

Indeed, most of small merchants have been struggling, facing the competition of large corporations, able to invest either in malls or large stores, or the Internet. It is hence difficult to compete with those tycoons. Nevertheless, everyone seems to agree that downtown commerce has a bright future aead of them, with those same corporations that thrived out of town developing concepts to conquer downtowns. How could small businesses compete?

By proposing a strong concept, and by creating strong alliance. Indeed, downtowns are interesting, with high traffic. It also can count on businesses that have strong personalities, sometime with a unique shopping experience. A project like la Jeune Rue is about proposing a comprehensive offer, with large investments. And I believe this is the right approach. I am sure that if small businesses could have the marketing power and the purchasing power required to unleash the full potential of proximity business, it could have a great impact.

Now, what the project shows, is that it is a difficult project to do, even though the potential is clear:

-          It requires a lot of money to invest

-          It requires also to be able to work with a lot of different actors with different needs, which complexify the decision making process.

Setting this project in Paris, one of the most expensive real estate, is obviously more difficult. I just hope the project will soon become real, with whoever can keep the project on. Because if that works, I believe the worldwide potential would be phenomenal.

Shall E-Retailers Developp Brick& Mortar Activities?

Obviously, it will be one of the most interesting trend of 2015: The increasing merger of online activities and brick & mortar activities.

Indeed, brick&mortar retailers are focusing now their strategies on earning marketshares online.

As Georges Plassat, CEO of Carrefour, pointed out lately, traditionnal retailers have an edge on e-retailers as they already own a store network, which is actually quite difficult to develop right now for new comers, as legislation and new projects are limiting the expansion.

But E-retailers are eager to create stores. Here is an interesting article I found on this topic, giving couple of examples of e-merchants who have opened some stores.

But this is a very interesting question on how E-merchant strategies want to develop their brick&mortar activities.

Indeed, managing a store network and retailing in the real world is a different activity than the online one. The way they manage inventory and opertionnal costs is very different.

Moreover, the promess they may have online (large product range, merchandising, customer service through adaptable delivery options) are quite different.

Obvisouly, it is a big challenge for e-merchants, as the online market becomes mature, one great way to grow is to compee with the brick&mortar. But with what kind of strategy? 

Here are some of the strategies they may have:

- Having a showroom, allowing customers to test products. But it will be difficult to have a nationwide strategy with only showrooming as it will only imply a higher cost of operations.

- Proposing extra services, in small places: reparation, customization of product, delivery. So far I have not seen much of it.

- Proposing products that tend to be difficult to retail online: I am thinking about breakable products, or too large products to be shipped. It could create extra sales and to limit the impact on the online activities.

- Make joint ventures in other retailers, such as hypermarkets, department stores, among others. It could help the joint venture to work better some categories where he would be weak, and for the e-retailer to set up fast a presence in a large chain.

Do Amazon Really Need A Store Network To Perform In The Long Term? Delivery Lockers May Be A Great Solution

CEO of Carrefour Georges Plassat often says that he does not see where the long term strategy of Amazon will lead the company to. Plassat believes that in order to perform in the long term, brick&mortar companies are ahead of e-merchants as the key is to own a strong retail network to provide customers with better customer experience, more service, and more convenience in terms of delivery. 

But what could actually save Amazon is the initiative they launched couple of years ago. Indeed, Amazon owns in several locations now delivery lockers, located in different stores like Seven Eleven. I believe that this strategy could be great in the long term. Indeed, some retail chains don't have any interests in launching an ecommerce activity. That is the case of seven eleven, or maybe chains like Mc Donald's. Both of them could benefit from a partnership with Amazon to generate traffic, new revenues, at a low cost.

Delivery lockers have appeared not a long time ago, and probably we will find new generation lockers, which could maybe propose more service, and with the rise of the mobile usage, probably delivery lockers could become a mainstream solution to go around the bargain of home delivery (when you are not home for instance).

Zappos Experimenting Social Shopping With Pinterest: Pintpointing

Social Commerce and Social Shopping have brought a lot of hype those past two years. Social media indeed has sprung up to become part of our daily lives. And marketers are still looming on how to leverage sales and marketshares thanks to these new media. But not a lot of them have been able to unlock the real potential of social media in terms of sales growth.

Amazon's owned company Zappos is one of the most creative e-merchant. They have about a year ago a new project in order to leverage Pinterest's success into a source of marketing and sales. The project was called Pintpointing. It allowed Zappos to propose product propositions based on Pinterests posts of one person. 

Zappos already lets users share what they buy through Facebook Inc. (FB), Twitter Inc. and Pinterest. While consumers share more often on Pinterest than on the other two social networks, sales from Pinterest posts contribute the smallest amount of revenue, Young said.

Zappos users were 13 times more likely to share a purchase on Pinterest than on Twitter and 8 times more likely to share on Facebook than Twitter, Young said. Even so, posts on Twitter brought in the most revenue -- an average of $33.66 an order -- while Facebook posts garnered $2.08 per order and sales from Pinterest were 75 cents on average, he said.

Pintpointing is a real marketing one to one project, and I wonder if it really worked. Indeed, I have tried to look for concrete results to share with you, without success.

Nevertheless, I believe that such an experimentation is important, because indeed, proposing great proposals based on social media activities is probably a great marketing tool.

Amazon Allows Its Customers To Negociate Prices

What I love about Amazon, it is its ability to innovate. According to an article I found on a French website, Amazon is going to launch a new feature allowing its customers to negociate the price it will find on the website. This will be a bilateral negociation, between the merchant and the customer. 

In this way, customers are taking a new step in its empowerment over the merchant.

The Next Device Apple May Launch To Change The World

What has been fascinating about Apple is its ability to go beyond customers expectation by launching products that will change the world. It was the case with the MacIntosh, the first computer that was designed to respond to anyones need and simple of utilization. The case with the Ipod, which changed the way we consume and listen to music. Then the Iphone obviously, and then the Ipad.

What is great is that nowadays, all these innovations seem to be part of our everyday life, while at the time totally new.

CNBC reported that Apple has been granted a patent for a new device.

It looks like a connected pen. Now, there are a lot of thoughts that are coming through my mind while I saw this news:

- This is the first real innovation that will come up for Apple since Steve Jobs death.

- This may also be the reason why we have a clear pic on what they were working on. When the Ipad or Iphone were launched, nothing was known about those projects. Now, infos are leaking.

- Is it really something out of the standards? Stylet already exist, and Samsung is thriving on the segment of large smartphones with the stylet technology. Back in 2005 I already had a windows pocket with a stylet.

The last question is the most important one: How could Apple make something outstanding, really new from a stylet? This is what Steve Jobs was good at: Innovating from devices already known, making them totally different, high tech, and easy to use. And that will be the greatest challenge of the post Steve Jobs era for Apple. I wish them sincerely good luck.

Discounters Outspend Tesco On Christmas Ad: Some Thoughts About Lidl Strategy

Lidl is at a very interesting time of its history. Lidl is indeed one of the largest retailer in the world, and thrive on hard discount. It is one of the leading retailer in Germany and has two interesting challenges in Europe:

1 - Grow as the most important challenger of Tesco in the UK

2 - Keep on growing in France as hard discount is going in limbo.

To achieve these two goals, Lidl has one main strategy: Strengthen its concept, in order not to be a standard hard discounter, but a reference in term of price/quality ration. This is the reason why Lidl has worked to hard to get its stores more welcoming. 

I read an interesting fact on the Internet: Discounters outspend Tesco on Christmas Ads this year. Indeed, the hard discount concept does not comply with advertisement, as hard discounter cuts off all kinds of extra costs that are not directly linked to operational costs. Lidl has also advertized a lot in France lately. But is it so strange to see hard discounter making ads? It is not so surprising. Both in France and in the UK hard discounters are now in a mature markets, where they need to find grow beyond expansion. That also needs they need now to explain well their concept, and to attract new customers out of their core clientele.

Of course, now that Lidl is now advertizing and hence getting far from the original discount concept, we may in couple of years from now see the rise of a new discount concept that will emerge, as it happened with the department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, hard discount...

Best Applications For Holliday Shopping

A quick article to show you what Forbes consider as the best applications to use for the holliday shopping season. 

This is interesting because it gives good example of the key features an application should have to boost retailers performance:

- Managing coupons and loyalty cards, thanks to barcodes management. Also, soon, you will be able to use NFC technologies, or bluetooth one like Ebeacon to do so.

- Proposes to reward instore visit. The key is to estimate how much you may reward your customers in order to have a positive return on investment. Nevertheless, the opportunity to leverage mobile technology to generate foot visite is important.

- Helping the customer to make a decision and find the right answer, by proposing content, ideas based on the user's profile, but also advices of other application users.

Walmart Investing In Its Prices To Compete With Amazon

I really believe that 2015 will be the year of a major fight in the Ecommerce industry.

Georges Plassat recent speeches on Amazon's strategy are not only to chat. Brick&mortar leaders intend to get marketshares quickly on the Internet. 

This is the reason why Walmart has decided to invest in its online pricing in order to catch up with Amazon. The price difference is narrowing, and I believe that Walmart has big plans on the Internet.

The price competition will hence become tougher as Amazon won't have any choice but to cut down its own price to keep its competitive advantage. As a result, the article shows that Compared with last year, prices are 12% lower at Wal-Mart, 9.7% lower at Amazon, and 3.5% lower at Target.  

As Georges Plassat said, traditionnal retailers have a competitive advantage in the Ecommerce game: They own stores network they developped over the years that will be hard to developp for a pure player (if they intend to do so). Amazon on the other end has plans to enter new categories to get business from brick & mortar retailers.

It will be interesting to see how things will go.

Les 3 principaux profils de promovores

Merci à @Adhréna pour l'article trouvé sur leur flux Twitter. Alors que nous sommes en train de terminer la période des fêtes de fin d'année, il est temps de faire un bref rappel des différents profils de promovore. Quelques informations sont très intéressantes:

1 Les coupons utilisés par les clients?

Pour être dans le monde de la distribution, il me paraît difficile de croire que les coupons sont fréquemments utilisés par les consommateurs. Au contraire, pour moi leur efficacité reste marginale vs des opérations de promotion de mass, avec théâtralisation en point de vente.

2 Les sources d'informations promotionnelles: 

83% In Store: Cela montre bien l'efficacité du marketing du point de vente, où je reste convaincu qu'il reste énormément à faire.

70% les boîtes au lettre. On est encore loin de l'arrêt du prospectus, média le plus efficace et le moins cher pour faire du marketing push. A quand une réelle réponse digitale pour préparer cette transition du prospectus à l'Internet. On y est pas encore.

Some Thoughts About Facebook's Long Term Strategy

I wanted to share with you an article (In French) I found about Facebook's Strategy for the next 15 years.

Here are the bullet points:

- Mobile as the heart of the strategy: Social media users migrate more and more to a mobile usage. That means applications must be developped on this channel to keep on growing their data base. The goal of Facebook in 5 years from now is to convert its users to its other mobile applications, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Search. And then only to monetize this audience. This is this point that annoys mean. I mean, Facebook has already reached a large number of users, billions are using the service, it is now a public company, and is actually experiencing difficulties to keep some of its audience that are not using Facebook anylonger. I don't know if it is still time to grow the audience first, and then seek for monetization systems. Facebook needs to be profitable ASAP, in order to leverage these profits in new projects.

Splitting Facebook's Activites in several applications. The goal is to provide a better user experience. Indeed, when you have such a big Facebook activity, it becomes sometime overwhelming. It will probably also allows to have more advertizing product to market in order to get revenues out of it. Mark Zuckerberg believes that the different usage of Facebook actually respond to different target, with different interests. This is also something that is scaring me. Indeed, the Internet has based its success on the accessibility, and the freedom it allowed. But if Facebook really starts to master all the component of people's relationship online, Facebook would become a sort of private web, which everybody used and hence would be forced to use. 

Allowing The Most To Access The Internet: Mark Zuckerberg has goals to provide Internet to poor countries in order to the most people to access its service, which is something cool. 

The good thing about this stratgegy:

It is long term, it has a real vision. And I believe it is based on a good strategy, on the right path.

The bad thing about this strategy:

This strategy still delays the time when Facebook would become really profitable. I believe that Facebook has already mastered its competition, and can now focus on its business modell. Its IPO was meant for that reason. But Mark Zuckerberg don't really expect any revenues before a dozen of years... It is very risky.

Customer Decision Making Process: What information drives consumers' online buying decisions?

Interesting blogpost I found from Forrester's website. This Christmas season is obviously crucial for most retailers results. The shopping frenzy makes it one of the busiest time of the year for retailers. More and more, customers tend to shop online instead than in malls and stores. But what information drives customer to shop online. What are the key information that will trigger the sales for e-retailers. Here is an interesting chart: 

What is interesting, is how there key aspects of the decision making process need to be taken into consideration into the website's strategy. Hence, by advertizing clearly the information about the shipping costs, customer reviews, product information, and clear return policy, one e-retailer will limit the bargain of buying online, and hence maximize the chance the customer to buy online.

Especially, if these information are clear, it will limit the risk the shopper to go to different online stores to compare, which is a real risk in the e-commerce world.

Also, what is interesting, is to see that brick&mortar retailers, which are facing high competition of e-retailers, should actually leverage this information. Thanks to mobile technology, they are able now to provide a lot of information on product reviews, and product information on store. They also have most of the time clear return policy, which is easier as you may deposit it in the nearby store.

Very interesting stats.

How Properly Prepare Business Concept Experimentation, Especially in #Retail

New business concepts are a great way to dynamise sales and adapt to new customers trend. But most of the time, people don't really have a good process to implement these new businesses, which ultimately leads to failure.

Hence: "Think of it this way: A pharmaceutical company would never introduce a drug without first conducting a round of experiments based on established scientific protocols. (In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires extensive clinical trials.) Yet that’s essentially what many companies do when they roll out new business models and other novel concepts. Had J.C. Penney done thorough experiments on its CEO’s proposed changes, the company might have discovered that customers would probably reject them."

Indeed, it is not that easy to perform a business experimentation. Because once you have the idea, which people believe is a good idea, the pressure is high to implement it as fast as possible to bypass the competition, and to earn the profits as fast as possible.

This article of the Harvard Business Review is very interesting, especially on a retail point of view as most of the examples brought are real case studies of US retailers.

Here is a Checklist of What You Should Do To Test A New Business Concept

1 - Does The Experiment Has A Clear Purpose?

In determining whether an experiment is needed, managers must first figure out exactly what they want to learn. Only then can they decide if testing is the best approach and, if it is, the scope of the experiment. 

When Kohl’s was considering adding a new product category, furniture, many executives were tremendously enthusiastic, anticipating significant additional revenue. A test at 70 stores over six months, however, showed a net decrease in revenue. Products that now had less floor space (to make room for the furniture) experienced a drop in sales, and Kohl’s was actually losing customers overall. Those negative results were a huge disappointment for those who had advocated for the initiative, but the program was nevertheless scrapped. The Kohl’s example highlights the fact that experiments are often needed to perform objective assessments of initiatives backed by people with organizational clout.

2 - Is The Experiment Doable?

Experiments must have testable predictions. But the “causal density” of the business environment—that is, the complexity of the variables and their interactions—can make it extremely difficult to determine cause-and-effect relationships. Learning from a business experiment is not necessarily as easy as isolating an independent variable, manipulating it, and observing changes in the dependent variable. Environments are constantly changing, the potential causes of business outcomes are often uncertain or unknown, and so linkages between them are frequently complex and poorly understood.

I believe that on this part it is very important to list all the variables that may impact the test, and right away from the beginning to understand how those variables have impacted the test results.

3- How Can We Ensure Reliable Results?

4- Have We Gotten The Most Value Out Of The Experiment?

What is fore sur is that experimentation is key before setting up new launches. The real effort is to master how much cost, and how much time you may spend on experimentation, as speed in execution also is a key factor of success in certain new business concept.

French #Retailer Picard Strategy: Japan & France

Interesting interview (in French) of Picard's CEO. Picard is to me one of the most exciting retail concept ever. As Ikea or Costco, it is based on hard discount operationnal approach, but by its store concept and category management, provide high service and optimized added value to customers.

Hence, Picard only sells frozen products, but as it focus on this technology, it is able to have large product range gowing to raw frozen veggies to concept desert or meals like sushi or burritos. Picard works on a 1 200 product range with 20% of the assortment changing every year.

Picard is aiming to launch a complete activity in Japan, and right now is testing a 50 products range in some corner stores.

Picard is planning on opening 250 to 300 new stores in France (it is counting so far 900 shops). It believe that stores are key in the customer relationship management of the company, compare to the Internet. Indeed, Internet website don't have any soul, don't create no feeling which could actually lead to brand loyalty. Instead, brick & mortar stores are the best way to create a real customer experience that ultimately lead to brand preference and loyalty.

Very interesting point of view. For those who don't know Picard, and if you come to France, I believe this is a must see concept.

The Bookbook of #Ikea

Not much to say, except it is a very clever way to advertize on a catalog, on an Internet medium.

Reuters decide to kill its comments Feature on its article

Reuter has recently decided to turn off its comments feature on its website. It explains the reason why on a long article. The whole concept is to say that in the age of social media, where conversation happens everywhere, and that it moved away for the comments on their website.

I totally disagree with this view. Of course, obviously, the conversation happens everywhere on social media, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, among other things. But social media is about multiplicity. And comments on an article are still one of the best way to discuss. When I read an interesting article on different news website, one of the first thing I do is to check out the comments. Indeed, where is the best place to see what people think about the article if it is not on this same page? 

I maybe old school on this one, but I still highly value comments on an article. Actually, I would really like to have more comments on my blog, which I always appreciate.

What do you think about it?

New #Retail Concepts: #Foodtrucks Allows Retails To Go To Customers

Brick & Mortar retailers are not dead, but they do need to evolve in order to adapt to the changes in customer behaviors. Indeed, with the rise of Ecommerce and multichannel strategies, retailers must adapt to reach its customers.

In the US, the food truck hype is high, and it allows people to get the food the closest they are, depending on the time of the day.

French retail magazine LSA published on its website some examples of retailers using this food truck concept as a store concept.  

I invite you to go on the website to have a look at actually what the pictures look like. The only regret I have, is that most of the examples are from brands sampling their products. But I believe that there are maybe a retail concept more sophisticated that may come up from it:

• You order what you want online, than collect it in the truck
• You maybe have a store that would move depending on the season, for example at the beach during summertime, in the business districk for the back to school period.

I think that having moving retail concept that will reach out to its customers is a trend that will eventually come up. It may not get a significant share of the FMCG market, but could tactically get customers from your competition, or lead to turn on sales.

What do you think about it?

What Do You Think About #Lowe's #OSHbot ? Is This The Future Of Shopping Experienc?

Intriguing article I found on the Internet lately. Retail chain Lowe's has launched experimentation of OSHbot, a robot designed to provide customer service in store. The robot can identify products, talk, interract with shoppers, and can lead the customer to the product it needs. It can speak several language, contact another salesperson in another store to provide extra advices. 

When I read the article headlines on Twitter "The Future of Shopping has Arrived and its Name is OSHbot" I had high expectations.

But after having seen the video, I am really wondering if this is what to expect from the future. Indeed, I believe that these kinds of robots must cost a fortune to equipe a store with (at least several thousand dollars a piece). How many of them would you need in a busy store to actually be enough to advice all of your clientele?

Also, those robots have a unique goal: to advice client. That means they can't do the other taskes a human may do, meaning merchandizing tasks.

Also, is the experience with a robot better than with an actual human? As a customer relationship expert, I still believe people do and will always value human interractions the most?

Now the only advantage I may found, is that if you are facing a high turnover, educating a salesforce may be costly and take time. Nevertheless, I am also questionning if those robots will have a long lifetime.

I would like to have your insights: What do you think about it? Do you really believe we will soon see those robots.

Does #Tesco 's Struggles Question The Application Of big Data In The #Retail Business?

Interesting article of the Harvard Business Review, trying to explain the reasons of Tesco's recent struggle in its domestic market. Tesco has been for years considered as one of the best global retailer, and a trailblazer in customer relationship management. But Tesco has lost market shares the past few years, letting hard discounters Aldi and Lidl grow in the UK market, whereas Tesco has based its success on its ability to value its customer experience and the analytics of customer data. Once the modell of a lot of other retailers, Tesco now brings a lot of questionning and the ability of big data to leverage revenue growth. Indeed, Tesco owns both the data (they know pretty much all what could be known of their customers) and have the experience to use it, but it has little impact now. What is even more schocking is that as hard discounters are benefiting of the weakness of Tesco, is that UK customers seem now to prefer a lean shopping experience to the fancy loyalty program Tesco has build up. To me Tesco's issues are simply revealing that before mastering marketing tools, one company should focus on execution. Also, analyzing data to maximizing profit without understanding customer needs is useless. It will be interesting to see how Tesco manages to get back on track to see if they rather lower their investment on their loyalty card program, or if they actually find new innovative way to create extra customer value out of it.

Georges Plassat CEO of #Carrefour Talks About Entrepreneurship, #CRM and #Technology

French Interview during the France Digital Day 2014, not so long ago, of Georges Plassat, CEO of Carrefour. Even though it was an English speaking event, the interview is unfortunately in French. But it was very interesting though, especially:

- His vision of customer relationship management: Before customer relationship management, in order to have a strong shopper experience, you need to master your trade and the basics. 

- His vision of "reinventing brick&mortar", it is a great happening to talk about reinventing brick & mortar business, but without strong core execution, it can only be an happening, a great PR speech. It is not so easy to transform brick & mortar business.

- His vision of E commerce: Even though things go fast, it is important to take its time, and to reach profitability, which is not such an easy business.

Should #Retailers Accept #ApplePay?

Apple Pay is probably the most innovative feature the new Iphones has. It has been years that cell phones company are looming on the mobile payment business. Apple has probably at the moment the best technology, it is one of the leader handheld manufacturer, and has probably a shot at getting the pie.

This news came up as Credit Card hack scandalls spring up. 

But the issue is that retailers are not keen on letting Apple getting in the business. When you run a business like Walmart that counts for about $500 millions in sales wordlwide, a tiny fee per sales could represent a lot. Here is a very interesting article that asks the question if Retailers shall accept Apple Pay. And It Emphasize on the reason why retailers are not proactive.

MCX was launched in 2011, led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,​ expressly to develop a mobile payment product. That product is CurrentC, which will be available sometime next year. MCX is a coalition of more than 50 retailers, including (besides Wal-Mart), 7-Eleven, Inc. Best Buy, CVS, Rite Aid, Lowe’s, Michaels, Sears, Gap, and Target.

In September, Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy announced they wouldn’t accept Apple Pay, and in October CVS and Rite Aid came along with a similar pronouncement. 

The article emphasizes on the fact that Walmart should accept Apple Pay as it could be a bargain for customers.

But I think that Walmart is right to negociate hard on that.

Indeed, so far no actors is currently on the market, and there is no way Apple Pay could get big without Walmart or 7/11. Now the main question is: Who will actually be able to developp the winning technology? I bet that mobile phone manufacturers are not the best placed one. I would bet more on Visa and/or mastercard that are currently sharing the credit card market.

What do you think about it?

What To Think About #Foursquare New Strategy?

Foursquare has been a company I have been following right from the beginning. I loved the concept, about geolocalization mixed with social media. The application was also working great. But Foursquare have been struggling for years now to actually concretly find a business modell.

They have not been able to get a large enough audience to really go on with the original idea of gaming, which could ultimately become a way to advertize geolocally. They have not so long ago relaunch their application, abandonning the initial concept to become a geolocalization application of businesses, much more like Yelp. 

But I believe that it was the issue: How can you be better than Yelp that has been there already for years? It seems that the relaunch has not yet experience much success. Once again it is not because the application is not good, it is just that Foursquare was not able to turn its application and audience into a real business modell.

I don't know if that was a great strategical move, as geolocalization is doing great, especially with the new ibeacon technology. Maybe Foursquare should have more focused on this technology, because they already had a pretty good know how in terms of geolocalization advertizing.

 It is hard now to find the next move Foursquare will make, but I believe that they are still a talented company, and wish them the best, hoping they could find a way to make things work.