Which technologies do shoppers really use?

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It's very easy to get excited about new technologies for shopping, particularly when they get a lot of press coverage.  It's also easy to get the impression that various new technologies are in more widespread use than they actually are. Shoppercentric It's therefore interesting to see what a study carried out by an independent source such as Shoppercentric has to report. They asked shoppers which access points they had used in the last month as part of their journeys to purchase.  Read more [...]

Showrooming

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There has been a lot of discussion about the problem of showrooming but really it's an opportunity for bricks and mortar retailers. Showrooming is where a shopper goes into a store to get expert advice and product information but then goes to an online competitor to buy the product at a lower price. Very frustrating for stores and typically most common with electrical and technology products. How to respond? Retailers have used various techniques to limit damage to sales. It seems crazy Read more [...]

The big question for shoppers

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Shoppers at the shelf edge often have one nagging question. Can I get this same item cheaper at another store? If you are in a grocery store looking at branded products the answer is much more likely to be no.  All of the big grocers have some form of price matching and now Waitrose has just announced: From today, our prices on branded grocery products are now identical to Tesco’s, excluding promotions. Every day common pricing (EDCP) EDCP is simpler for shoppers as there is less Read more [...]

Getting shoppers to buy more – Omnichannel goes back to basics

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It's easy to spend lots of time focusing on the new and exciting technologies for implementing Omnichannel and forget some of the most fundamental needs of customers. Go into almost any store and a proportion of customers will be paying in cash. It might be a large number of customers or a relatively small number but the actual revenue to the retailer will very likely be most significant. Now look at online. It may offer a wider range of products than are available in the store but Read more [...]

Retail is detail

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Tesco's Chief Executive, Philip Clarke, emphasised in his strategy for putting Tesco UK back on track that "retail is detail".  I'm sure that we all agree with him. The challenge for Tesco, and most other retailers, is that shoppers have increasingly high expectations about their shopping experience. They have a much lower tolerance of long checkout queues, missing price tickets, misleading promotions and poor customer service.  Not only has the base line risen but it keeps rising. For Read more [...]

Smarter Promotions – The Top 8 features

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In my last blog I made the case for smarter promotions. This blog focuses on what smarter promotion tickets look like to shoppers at the key decision point - the shelf edge. Tickets that sell  The prime objective of a smarter promotion ticket at the shelf edge is to get shoppers to make a purchase that they would not otherwise make. Retailers who do this well convince shoppers to buy immediately by having the right added value information on their tickets. Most importantly smarter Read more [...]

The case for Smarter promotions

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It wasn't that long ago when shoppers got quite excited to see a product on the shelf with 10% off. Of course shoppers soon got used to 10% off promotions and stores had to offer 15% or 20% price cuts.  In what seemed like no time at all 20% became the minimum price cut to have an impact and 25%, 40% and 50% are frequently seen today in many different product categories. Shoppers are smart As the discount offers increased shopper began to wonder how stores could afford to be so generous.  Some Read more [...]

What makes eCommerce sites successful and how do we put it in stores?

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When retailers with eCommerce sites were asked by an RSR survey which technologies they most valued two of the top three answers were Product Reviews (52%) and Product Recommendations (50%). These results are consistent with previous years’ surveys in spite of the large number of newer technologies that have since become available. Retailers with eCommerce sites know from monitoring their sites that product reviews and recommendations sell more products.  According to Reevoo  there’s a Read more [...]

Promotional tickets that sell

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As retailers move closer to an omnichannel strategy we need to see what more can be learnt from the eCommerce channel and applied at the shelf edge in stores. Of course ways to increase revenue and profitability are particularly interesting. One source of information about eCommerce is a benchmark report from RSR called eCommerce 2012.  In this report RSR identified what retailers thought were the top opportunities to increase eCommerce revenues. At the bottom of the list of opportunities Read more [...]

Optimisation

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With a No1 objective of raising profits without selling more items it's not surprising that most retailers are investing in ways to help them optimise pricing. Software to manage markdowns, adjust prices based on competition, demand and even weather conditions are now being more widely used or evaluated. Claims are being made of improvements to gross margin of 1-5% in certain defined segments. More than price While price is important optimisation is not just about price, or even tuning websites. Read more [...]