Perhaps lost amid all the reports of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales records was the fact that not all retailers cashed in, and not because consumers didn’t want what they sell. To the contrary, customer demand deluged those retailers, who responded by floating the big holiday fail whale because their sites couldn’t handle the [...]
Posts by :
-
retailing
What Are Smart Retailers Really Selling?
Retail was founded on a very simple principle: to acquire and make available for people that which they could not easily or affordably obtain on their own. Thus, buying wholesale and selling retail was – and is today – a service to the community. Whether the true need of the consumer was convenience or access to [...]
What Are the Best Retailers Really Selling?
Retailing was founded on a very simple principle: to acquire and make available for people that which they could not easily or affordably obtain on their own. Thus, buying wholesale and selling retail was – and is today – a service to the community. Whether the true need of the consumer was convenience or access to [...]
Lessons from Australia: Back to the Future
At this summer’s Online Retailer conference and expo in Australia, the biggest attitude difference that I saw between Australian and U.S. retailers emerged during a panel session at the event. The panelists spoke about a brick-and-mortar executive attitude that apparently is prevalent right now in Australia. The attitude can be summed up like this: “If [...]
Online Sales Now An Essential Element of Holiday Projections
Online retailers got an early Christmas present from the National Retail Federation, which for the first time in its history released a holiday forecast for online sales. The NRF predicted holiday sales online will grow 12 percent over last year to as much as $96 billion. News outlets picking up that story delved into the [...]
Lessons from Australia: Life Without Amazon
I had the privilege of spending a week this summer in Sydney, Australia, attending the Online Retailer conference and expo. I was really excited to go not least because it was my first opportunity to go to Australia, but also because I was very interested to get an on-the-ground glimpse of Australian retailing and how [...]
Checking in at Burberry’s New Flagship Store
While some online retailers try hard to mimic the in-store shopping experience, Burberry is headed in the opposite direction. The 156-year-old brand has opened one of the most futuristic stores in the world on Regent Street in London, and going inside is like walking into a fully online experience. Music, an emotional experience, a place [...]
When Customer Service and Profits Collide
A former colleague of mine was a store manager during the Great Recession, and it was imperative that he kept a tight grip on the thin strands of customer loyalty for his store. His employer’s philosophy: Keep a customer happy and they’ll keep coming back. But truth be told, there were instances when he didn’t [...]
Survey Overstates the ‘Price’ of Showrooming
This morning I read a story that quoted a study from GroupM Next regarding the likelihood a consumer would use a brick-and-mortar retail store as a showroom for an online retailer. The study was titled, “Showrooming & The Price of Keeping Buyers In-Store” and surveyed 1,000 shoppers in the U.S. and posed 10 hypothetical showrooming [...]
At Penney, Technology Fuels Transformation
“It’s really complicated to see the future, but people will discover it as time goes on.” That’s the view of JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson, who sees the future of retailing more clearly than most and has some great ideas about how to get there. “We’re trying to simplify internally and transform externally,” the former [...]