Exploit Omni-Channel Retailing to Advance Your Career

If you expect to be a rising young star in retailing, you’ll need to know about the changes that are driving the industry. Chief among these is the concept of omni-channel retailing.

To accommodate ever-changing consumer behavior, you’ll need to unite customer and shopping data with behavioral profiling and today’s buying preferences. The goal is an integrated shopping experience. In his blog post on Econsultancy, Darren Hitchcock explains five ways to exploit omni-channel retailing.

Leveraging Social Media

Customers talking to customers can be very effective in moving merchandise. Bored and saturated with traditional advertising messages that “talk at consumers,” today’s winning brands have discovered the power of peer-to-peer communications. These discussions and recommendations occur on a playing field that’s more receptive to the veiled, subtle sell—social media.  

Offering In-Store Reviews and Product Guides

Combining the power of positive online reviews with today’s increasingly savvy techno-mobile consumers is a win-win for both brand and buyer. Here, says Hitchcock, the trend is to make reviews and product guides available in-store, allowing customers to read reviews and see detailed product information while they shop. According to Motorola Solutions’ “Annual Holiday Shopping Survey Results,” December 2011, more than 80% of brick-and-mortar retailers will have wireless networks available in their stores by 2017.

Personalizing Physical Shopping

Being greeted by a trusted associate who remembers a customer’s buying preferences can connect buyer to a store, engendering loyalty and fostering buying impulses. Generic sales pitches are giving way to apps that help employees personalize the shopping experience. There are even apps that alert customers about in-store sales and events while they shop.

Enhancing Customer/Product Interaction

Look into technologies that give customers more detailed, personalized shopping recommendations. In-store stations that allow customers to interact with products can also serve to collect important information, including clothing size and buying history. Result: more comprehensive product guides geared to the individual customer.

Dovetailing Social and Local

Location-based social media like Foursquare and Facebook Places means businesses can exploit social channels to market to local customers. By linking mobile users to their friends via "check-ins," stores can offer coupons, sales alerts, and messages about important events to shoppers they’ve identified.

Wilson Kerr, vice president of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, Boston notes the flexibility that omni-channel retailing affords. “No longer is a physical store limited by stock on hand,” said Kerr. “No longer does pricing need to be impersonal and locked down. No longer do consumers need to fumble with plastic loyalty punch cards or paper coupons. Smart retailers and brands can deliver personalized calls-to-action at the exact time and place that a consumer is most likely to act upon that message, and this most often occurs in a retail store, while consumers are shopping.”

If you’re a recent business or MBA grad eager to move your retail career forward, you’ll need to stay ahead of the integrated physical, digital, mobile and social shopping trends that are shaping the industry.

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