A Critical Assessment of 250 luxury, Premium, and Lifestyle Retail Brands.

Comparative measures for the pandemic.

 A Critical Assessment of 250 Luxury, Premium, and lifestyle Retail Brands. in RetailWire

Last year we saw a decade of retail innovation roll out in just months. Has the industry been able to keep that pace or is it stalling out? The latest edition of the Omnichannel Leadership Report is the pulse check you’ve been looking for.

Download the 2022 Omnichannel Leadership Report to learn:

The state of the industry’s post-pandemic omnichannel progress

If brands are delivering the solutions and services customers expect

If and how brands enable and empower their store associates

Which brands are the top five omnichannel leaders for 2022

Download the Report

Optimize Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Useful look at the space via Wharton. 

How to Optimize Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

 LISTEN TO THE PODCAST:

Wharton’s Raghuram Iyengar talks about his research on how firms can harness the full benefits of omnichannel marketing.

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Omnichannel marketing seems like a simple enough concept. Consumers like to shop online, offline, and across different channels, so firms need to meet them wherever they are. But coming up with an omnichannel marketing strategy is a lot more complicated than just collecting cookies and tracking purchases. A new study that appears in a special issue of the Journal of Marketing in collaboration with the Marketing Science Institute explains why omnichannel is not a panacea.

There are three big challenges to making it work. Those challenges are outlined in the study, along with some solutions that include using machine learning and blockchain technology to harness the full benefits of omnichannel marketing. Wharton marketing professor Raghuram Iyengar is a co-author of the paper, titled “Informational Challenges in Omnichannel Marketing: Remedies and Future Research.” The other co-authors are: Tony Haitao Cui, marketing professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management; Anindya Ghose, marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business; Hanna Halaburda, technology, operations and statistics professor also at NYU Stern; Koen Pauwels, marketing professor at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business; S. Sriram, marketing professor at Michigan University’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business; Catherine Tucker, management and marketing professor at MIT Sloan School of Management; and Sriram Venkataraman, marketing professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. 

Iyengar joined Knowledge@Wharton to talk about the findings. Listen to the full podcast at the top of this page or keep reading for an edited transcript of the conversation.

Knowledge@Wharton: Not only are firms trying to execute omnichannel marketing better, but researchers like you are trying to understand it better, even while the rapid evolution of technology makes that a moving target. What does this study add to the literature?

Raghuram Iyengar: Omnichannel certainly is a very hot topic. When companies are thinking about omnichannel, they sometimes want to think about distinguishing from multichannel. The big distinguishing aspect of it is multichannel has different ways in which you’re reaching the customer. Omnichannel is that as well, but it should be in synergy.

If you are, for example, a customer of REI, you might have a mobile application, you might have emails coming in. And if they are pursuing an omnichannel strategy, they are hoping that the customer is seeing different pieces of information in conjunction with each other and, in some sense, are complementary to each other.

Carrying that out is not that easy because you need to have a good sense of what the data is like — all the different touchpoints that the customer has had with REI or any other company — and then be able to execute it on the back end. Putting it all together is not as simple as it seems. ... ' 

Omnichannel Profitable in Post Pandemic?

 Been asked similar questions in recent interactions.  What will the change be and should retailers react? 

Can omnichannel be as profitable for retailers as in-store sales? in Retailwire  by Yogesh Kulkarni with further expert opinion.

The pandemic has accelerated the growth of online sales three to five times depending on the vertical and, even as in-store comes back, no one expects online to regress to pre-pandemic levels. COVID-19 has hastened digital initiatives by as much as five years, meaning retailers now need to leapfrog their intended technology and process development roadmap just to stay even with customer expectations and competitors.

Target saw its operating margin drop last year even as digital revenues more than doubled. 

“The biggest factor in ’21 was the supply chain and digital pressure, about 110 basis points of pressure on the year from that, but I think that’s actually a good place to illustrate some of how we think about rate because to me, it’s all about the dollar impact, not the rate impact,” said Target CFO Michael Fiddelke on the company’s recent earnings call. “Digital is a perfect example. If you would have told us we could double the digital business and only see 110 basis points of pressure last year, I think we all would have taken that outcome.”..." 

Omnichannel Search Using AI

 Brought to my attention, they link to an e-book they offer.  Note the below is ad.  I am unconnected, have not tried this, but the thoughts and offer looked interesting.

The flexible AI-powered Search & Discovery platform

See: Algolia.

Create cutting-edge UX for web, apps & ecommerce.

Top 3 obstacles to great omnichannel and how to overcome them

After this year, there is no telling what the future holds for retail.

One thing is certain: consumers are online more than ever, expecting the best possible shopping experience, whatever platform they are on. But top-notch omnichannel is not easy.

Discover how to overcome the main obstacles to great omnichannel experiences and start increasing your conversion rate today.

In this eBook, you’ll learn about: Winning omnichannel strategies, How search gives you an edge in the competitive retail landscape, How to build great omnichannel search and discovery

How Decathlon, a leading sporting goods retailers, increased their conversion rates by 50% with their cutting-edge omnichannel strategy  .... "  

Future of Grocery is Omnichannel

 Clearly, but the how the sculpted elements of the supply chain, from supplier to store to door will require much technology and behavioral experimentation.

The Future of Grocery Is Omnichannel  in Supplychainbrain

October 6, 2020 By Michael Schedlbauer, Global Industry Manager – Grocery Industry, TGW

Which grocery shopping items are you willing to buy online or via click-and-collect? Most of us would be happy to order reliably uniform products, such as toilet paper, frozen vegetables or canned tomatoes, without choosing them off the shelf. But what about fresh fish, or potatoes? Maybe, if you trusted the retailer. Tomatoes and avocadoes, though, are probably a step too far. Most people would prefer to give them a good look-over in person, even a squeeze.

And yet, the growth in online grocery orders — whether for delivery or pick-up — is undeniable. Many consumers made it over the initial hurdle of establishing which online retailers to work with, and taking the time to set up an account, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Now, they appreciate the gains in convenience and time-saving, and are continuing to shop that way, at least more than they did before. A recent McKinsey report predicted online grocery shopping could rise to more than 10% of the total by 2025, and commented that online grocery is supply driven. As online grocery retailers provide more online capacity and options, customers will adopt this new method of grocery shopping.

Grocery retailers are challenged with building flexibility into their supply chains to meet these new demands; thus we will see the future of grocery retail adopting omnichannel solutions. Consumer demands will continue to evolve in an environment where there is a wider choice of customer journeys, and the grocery industry must be ready to respond.  ... "

Improving Omnichannel Sales through Geospatial Analytics

Have seen and developed geospatial analytics for single and groups of locations.  Typically for the case of adding stores.  But this is different and quite intriguing.   An examination of Omnichannel that includes the aspect of geospatial specific data.    Now can we include the likely process (journey?) of such consumers?   And is that further useful?

 Supercharging retail sales through geospatial analytics in McKinsey

A retailer can now use geospatial analytics to understand the interactions between its online and offline channels. With these insights, it can create a higher-performing retail network.

By Rob Hearne, Alana Podreciks, Nathan Uhlenbrock, and Kelly Ungerman

A retailer can now use geospatial analytics to understand the interactions between its online and offline channels. With these insights, it can create a higher-performing retail network.
Is our outlet store in San Francisco hurting foot traffic and sales at our full-price store two miles away? Or is it doing the opposite—attracting new customers and making them more likely to visit both stores? How are our five Manhattan stores affecting our e-commerce revenue? Are they making consumers more likely to shop on our website or to search for our products on Amazon? If we open a new mall store in the Dallas metro area, what impact will it have on sales at our existing stores, at our department-store partners, and online?

The answers to these kinds of questions are increasingly crucial to a retailer’s success, as more and more consumers become omnichannel shoppers. Guessing wrong can lead to lost sales and expensive real-estate-investment mistakes. Yet most retailers don’t give adequate thought to the cross-channel impact of their stores. They rely on gut feel or on high-level analysis of aggregated sales data to gauge how their offline and online channels interact with each other, and they assume that cross-channel dynamics are the same in every market—when, in fact, every single customer touchpoint affects the rest of the retail network in its own unique way, depending on a vast range of factors. .... "

Blockchain for Consumer Goods

Seems a weak connection, but the case is well made its all about having records with trust and transparency:

5 Reasons Why Blockchain Will Be a Boon for Consumer Goods    By Vaijayanth M.K., of Accenture 

Distributed-ledger technologies are set to transform the consumer goods sector by improving trust and transparency

From data analytics to omnichannel shopping, emerging technologies are revolutionizing the consumer goods industry — and blockchain could mark the next step change. Why? Because many of its myriad applications will enable the industry to increase trust and transparency — both across the supply chain and, crucially, with consumers.

Blockchain represents a new way to store information. It is a digital record of all activity related to a product or service that is decentralized — “distributed” — rather than held in a single location. No single party can tamper with it, and every party can see everything, thereby creating a secure, transparent, “single version of the truth.”   

Blockchain is in the early stages of adoption in the consumer goods sector, but it represents a significant opportunity. Here are five ways for businesses to tap into its value.  ... " 

Retail Omnichannel Commerce

Retailers Are Starting To Reap The Rewards Of Omnichannel Commerce
Webinar replay
By Michelle Beeson in Forrester

Retail digital business executives must challenge the status quo and deliver omnichannel excellence across the customer lifecycle. Changing consumer behaviours, new technology, and an evolving competitive landscape mean that traditional organizational structures, processes, and channel-centric measures are no longer fit for purpose. A truly omnichannel operation that spans the customer life cycle will optimize revenue, deliver capital efficiencies like cost savings, spawn operational efficiencies, and improve the customer experience overall.  ... " 

Next Gen Personalization

Good piece shows the breadth of tech being used to personalize.

Shop.org Takeaway: Three steps to next-gen personalization
 By Deena M.Amato-McCoy in ChainStoreage.

Consumers are becoming more digitally influenced on a seemingly daily basis — but omnichannel retailers find themselves hard-pressed to keep up the pace. Retailers need to meet their needs across all touchpoints, and create a frictionless shopping experience despite where the shopping journey starts and ends.

To achieve this goal, successful retailers are adopting a new digital tools that allow them to “connect the dots,” and personally engage shoppers before, during and following the shopping experience. Industry observers discussed this new level of personalization during Shop.org, held in Los Angeles, Sept. 25-28.

Among the top solutions are:

Voice: Conversational commerce is shaping up to be one of the year’s hottest disruptors, and momentum continues to grow. As customers grow more comfortable using digital voice assistants found on devices like Amazon Echo and Dot, Google Home, and others, retailers have a new way to personalize the shopping experience, and remove some of the friction that still occurs via online and mobile transactions.

Jet.com Walmart’s e-commerce arm, is so bullish on voice that it is one of the company’s “top priorities this year,” Marc Lore, president and CEO, of Walmart e-commerce U.S., said at shop.org.

“You have to look beyond the technology and toward what it enables,” Lore added. “It’s more than a tool that helps customers order product for delivery. It gives us the chance to connect with shoppers one-on-one. And we can use data to become better merchandisers.”

Artificial intelligence: Retailers that use AI are essentially adopting programs that teach their computers to learn patterns. Then brands can use results to deliver better customer experiences.

AI is playing a critical role across Disney’s retail channels. Committed to delivering “a more immersive, personalized, and robust omnichannel experience than ever before, “Disney is adding AI to our e-commerce site so we can help improve the guest experience online and in-store,” said Mike White, senior VP and chief technology officer for Disney consumer products and interactive media.

AI is helping Disney understand its best-selling category SKUs searched online, and then using this data to evaluate customer affinities. “Then we can expand online and in-store assortments, which add more value to their experiences,” he added.  .... "

Spending on Intelligent Assistants

Interesting piece,  note the list of companies sharing their experiences with an intelligence assistance strategy.

Intelligent Assistants Answer the Challenge of Omnichannel CX Editor's Pick!   by Dan Miller in CustomerThink

These days, customer care professionals are besieged by tech-infused buzzwords and buzzphrases. The proliferation of smartphones drove demand for a “Mobile Strategy,” to which the word “Social” was quickly appended. Then it became a global challenge to assimilate “Big Data & Analytics” in order to ingest the zettabytes of data and metadata surrounding customers activities, preferences and intents.  .... 

Then came an onslaught of solutions and platforms that introduced “Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning” as a cure for common CX problems. In brief, they promised rapid recognition customer intent. Quick on their heels came integration of Deep Neural Networking and Cognitive Computing. Aside from bringing more buzzwords into the CX fray, their advent got both Contact Center and Customer Experience professionals wondering whether they needed to staff up with computational linguists and knowledge management aficionados. ... " 

" ... Spokespeople from The U.S. Army USAA, ING Bank, Domino’s, FedEx, Telefonica, Hyatt Hotels, Coca-Cola and dozens of others have shared the wisdom they gained from the experience of designing and implementing an Intelligent Assistance strategy in their organizations. The unsurprising, overall finding is that these firms proved that increased automation rates correlated with increased levels of both customer satisfaction (usually measured in Net Promotor Scores) and employee satisfaction (measured in retention rates).

The technological miracle that is underway amounts to nothing short of “redefining self-service.” It used to be synonymous with “automated handling” and “call avoidance” (for expensive agents, at least). Now it means customer control and lower effort expended, in short “serving one’s self.” .... " 

How Alibaba Works with Retail Data

Via O'Reilly.

How Alibaba does retail data

What does it take to compete in a global market in which retail and the cloud are increasingly intertwined? Alibaba says it's domain-specific data science and machine learning for the masses. Here's how Alibaba's strategy differs from Amazon's—and how the company pulls it off.  

From ZDNet:  A view of Omnichannel.

Alibaba: Building a retail ecosystem on data science, machine learning, and cloud
Slide show By George Anadiotis for Big on Data     .... " 

Measuring Omnichannel in Retail

With some good expert discussion:

Are retailers measuring omnichannel all wrong?     by Nikki Baird

Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of an article from Retail Paradox, RSR Research’s weekly analysis on emerging issues facing retailers, presented here for discussion.

There is a point where customer engagement leads to more sales. But there is also a point where it leads to diminishing returns. That’s the beauty of the sales per engagement-minute spent metric.

This metric enables a breakdown to identify causal factors. If an employee is spending a lot of time with customers but not selling much, they need some sales training help. If a store is getting a lot of traffic and employees are spending less and less time with customers, they need sales help. If a store is spending more and more time fulfilling orders instead of helping the customers who walk through the door, they need more fulfillment staff. Where are the engagement minutes coming from, and where are they delivering value vs. detracting from value? .... " 

Amazon vs Wal-Mart

In Knowledge@Wharton:  A considerable look at the question.  Both now as omnichannel giants.

Amazon vs. Walmart: Which One Will Prevail?

Recent M&A deals by both Amazon and Walmart have set the two firms on a direct collision course to become the “everything store” in an omnichannel world. .... 

In the media hullabaloo following Amazon’s announcement this month that it was buying Whole Foods Market, largely overlooked was the same-day news that Walmart was acquiring menswear e-tailer Bonobos. While Amazon did make a bigger splash with its $13.7 billion foray into organic groceries, Walmart beefed up an e-commerce stable that already includes the acquisitions of digital natives Jet.com, Shoebuy, ModCloth and Moosejaw.

Collectively, these M&A deals have set Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, on a direct collision course with Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, to be the “everything store” in an omni-channel world — where consumers no longer distinguish between shopping online and offline. And it pits two Baby Boomer mavericks, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, against Walmart’s e-commerce chief Marc Lore, the Gen X founder of Jet.com.   .... " 

On Indoor Positioning Systems

We did considerable research in how indoor location systems could be used and their influence on retail behavior.  In Retailwire: 

Indoor positioning systems are adding relevance to omnichannel shopping.
A richer experience, bridging digital and physical channels.
Today’s empowered consumers use multiple digital channels to search out products. But, while physical stores may be their ultimate destination, retailers are still struggling for ways to maintain the continuity of their searches once they arrive.

According to this report from Opus Research, one of the most promising solutions to emerge is VLC (visible light communication), which uses pulses emitted from LED lights to communicate with smartphones. And since LEDs are rapidly being adopted for their energy savings, many retailers may already have a funding model in place.   .... "

An Omni Channel Data-Driven Retailer

Interesting retail from Ronald van Loon     ...  Red through for the suggestions.

How to Become an Omni-Channel Data-Driven Retailer

Everyone's Blog Posts -  DSC. by Ronald van Loon 

In today’s digital age where customers are as likely to buy a product from an eCommerce website as from a brick and mortar store, delivering a seamless and value-adding shopping experience has become more important than ever before.|

 The multiple shopping channels available to customers and the competition posed by other retailers have made it an absolute necessity for a retail business to integrate data inputs from different channels and use to it define an omni-channel shopping experience. 

As a Big Data and BI influencer, I have worked with a large number of businesses within and beyond the retail industry. Using this knowledge and expertise, I have developed a 5-step approach that businesses operating in the retail sector can adopt to meet the expectations of their customers and become an omni-channel, data-driven retailer.   .... "

Zebra SmartSense

This was brought to my attention.  Zebra SmartSense™ for Retail Helps Retailers Execute Successful Omnichannel Fulfillment Strategies.  " ... This innovative solution combines UHF RFID, video and a new micro-location capability — to identify and track the journey and location of merchandise, associates and shoppers in a retail store in real-time. A powerful edge analytics engine analyzes data from these sources to provide intelligent and actionable insights to achieve optimal stocking levels, detect and identify misplaced merchandise or assets, pinpoint theft and enhance store promotions and product placement activities. .. " 

Retail Marketing to Millennials

In Retailwire.  Good overview on the use of channel interactions by millennials in Retail, and discussion.   In the discussion, Peter Fader makes a good point:

Peter Fader
Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School of the Univ. of Pennsylvania

Allow me to expand on Ralph’s key point: “not all Millennials are alike” — in fact they’re vastly different. All these efforts to stereotype and target Millennials are doing more harm than good for retailers. Any effort to paint all consumers in a large demographic group with the same brush is a terrible mistake.

A modest proposal: let’s stop stereotyping and focus instead on finding/leveraging *meaningful* differences across consumers …  " 

Costco not going Omnichannel

Long time follower of Costco.  Studied how the early use of the Internet in-store influenced their sales.  They never paid much attention of omni channel, and this seems to confirm that.   Will Amazon erode their bulk purchase options?   Scheduled purchases?   In Retailwire: 

Costco sticking to store-first approach by Tom Ryan

While Costco acknowledges shortcomings in its digital approach, Richard Galanti, EVP and CFO, last week inferred the wholesale club has no plans to become an omnichannel retailer.

“Our value proposition is best served for us when it’s in-store, getting members to come in and buying when they can see everything there that we have,” he said on Costco’s fourth-quarter conference call.

The response followed recent investor concerns over Costco losing ground to Amazon and that its secondary digital focus was a liability in attracting Millennials.    ... " 

On Predictability of Demand

Discussion in Retailwire: 

" ... According to RSR’s benchmark report on omnichannel order profitability, unpredictable consumer demand is the top business challenge among retail respondents. After much consideration, I would offer that consumer demand isn’t really that unpredictable. Instead, retailers are just really bad at predicting it.

Part of the issue is one of “garbage in” — as in, “garbage in yields garbage out.” There seems to be a lot of garbage in the inputs retailers use to decide what to stock where. First, a lot of them start with last year’s plan, which means the bad assumptions made last year are automatically carried over into this year. ... " 

Identity Graphs for Marketing

Admit I had not heard the term 'identity graph' in terms of marketing before, but now I am intensely interested in the graphical implications.  Still considering that.   Where do you start?

Marketers Need 'Identity Graphs,' but Are They as Accurate as Advertised?
By George Slefo

Nearly everything is expected to become connected over the next decade. Kitchens. Cars. Watches. TVs. Wearables. Smartphones -- the list can go on and on. Consumers already use at least six different connected devices each day, according to Nielsen.

But if marketers want to deliver a seamless experience to the same individual across different devices, they'll likely need to understand, and use, identity graphs.

Identity graphs help marketers match multiple devices to the person who uses them. The question is whether they're as accurate as often advertised.

"I think we are in the very early stages of data," Julie Fleischer, managing director at OMD, told Ad Age at OmniDigital, a conference held by Ad Exchanger in Chicago last week. "We're at the point where everybody recognizes that data is the key to everything."

"But we're in these early stages where all of the focus is on the pipes and how we do the accessing," she added. "Not enough focus is on if the data is correct, and if the data is wrong, which happens so often, then everything spins out of control."  .... '