Amazon is piloting a new type of pickup location in Chicago. These are indoor, retail locations which are staffed with Amazon employees, where you can return Amazon purchases, and pickup Amazon orders. In many ways these locations are similar to Amazon lockers (which are placed in locations like Whole Foods and 7-11). While the standard…
Just a few years ago, this would be the time of year I’d be giving holiday pregame talks to retailers focused on optimizing specific events — in-store on Black Friday, and online on Cyber Monday. But around the world, the holiday shopping game is already on. The old playbook has been completely disrupted by mobile….
You’re more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click a banner ad. And you can research and buy virtually any product, at any time, from any touch point. This fundamental capability overrides the marketing funnel and reorders the priorities of media.
With smartphones conditioning a generation to expect what they want, how and when they want it, omni-channel has become the ante for retailing’s future. Retailers need to move beyond their channels to serve each customer wherever and whenever she wants to be served. Today even retailers with very dynamic inventory like TJMaxx, Saks OFF Fifth…
One thing hasn’t changed since the dawn of retail: We feel more confident in our choices when we know people like us have made the same choice before us, and had a good outcome. Early carpet and spice merchants would pay confederates to act as customers and make their stands look busy. And the attendant…
This quarter, we hit two milestones in retail. Target, Best Buy and Walmart all had 50% or more of their website visitors coming from mobile devices. And the overall time shoppers spent on retail sites using mobile devices crossed the 60% threshold. As mobile initiates more online traffic, though, retailers need to contend with a gap between shopping and buying that could sink their brands.