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Catalogue volume continued to decline in June. We received and logged just 75 catalogues in June 2010, compared with 129 this time last year. However, of those 75 catalogues, 60 percent carried some sort of special offer—including sales or discounts, free delivery or a free gift. Breaking the data down further, the
or discount, offered by 40 percent of the catalogue covers we tracked. On the other hand, just 11 catalogues (14.7 percent) promised free delivery. That’s down appreciably from 24.1 percent of the May 2010 catalogues. The percentage of cataloguers offering a free gift was also significantly lower than the previous month—down from 20.5 percent to just 12 percent.
most popular offer was a sale
21 percent—we tracked 91 catalogues during the month. What most surprised me about the July data was that 64 percent of all catalogues landing on my desk featured some sort of offer or promotion on the cover and nearly half of them (49.5 percent) featured a sale or discount. This is the fourth consecutive rise in catalogues touting a special-price promotion on their front cover and marks the
In July, catalogue volume rose
highest percentage ever for catalogues promoting sales and discounts since we started the Catalogue Log in January 2009. Up until now, the highest percentage was 43.7 percent, recorded in August 2009. The percentage of catalogues offering a free
gift with purchase remained roughly unchanged from June, rising a mere 0.1 percent. Free delivery was marginally less popular in July, down from 14.7 percent to 12.1 percent. When we posted a link to the July Catalogue
Log on our Twitter feed, we were asked whether most of the discounting activity was driven by the need to shift spring/summer stock. Our data showed that yes, summer sales, or end of summer sales, were the most popular cover lines. Notably though, when we compared the data to last year, we found that discounting started later, in August. Is this further indication of a weakening in the economy? With the stats for August yet to be compiled, heavy discounting may be a worrying trend.
Miri Thomas editor
miri@catalog-biz.com twitter.com/catalogbiz
Managing the multichannel customer’s demand
As discussed in the article “Multinational customers, universal priorities” (Cross- Atlantic Insight, 7th June), the recent Ipsos MORI consumer survey commissioned by Sterling Commerce revealed two main concerns for British, French and German consumers: “Always having accurate product stock availability” and “easier ways of ordering and receiving items”. It seems out-of-stock scenarios frustrate shoppers more than anything else. Considering this, it is clear that retailers should keep customers up-to-date on numbers of items left in stock, or at least on whether there are enough to fulfil their order. Unfortunately, rather than being in real-time, most websites are only updated on a daily basis, which is not often enough.
On top of this, retailers are constantly adding new channels, including most recently mobile,
which is making inventory visibility even more difficult to attain. Demand now comes from numerous places, thereby creating gaps in available products to meet the need across all the different channels at once. Retailers can only improve their customer service and deliver a superior experience by overcoming these visibility gaps. This can be done by using technology to obtain a clear view of all on-hand, in-transit, on- order, and available-to-promise inventory—including products that they have yet to physically receive.
Retailers need to offer broader
delivery options to customers, so that they feel they receive items smoothly and have some degree of flexibility, depending on their situation. For example, click-and- collect purchases, completed online and collected in-store, are now becoming more popular and
while click-and-collect provides convenience for consumers, it also has an advantage for retailers, as it can lead to “impulse purchases” generated when the customer visits the store to collect their item. It’s important to be aware of all trends in cross-channel purchasing and returns and the kinds of services that customers expect. However, retailers will only be able to take advantage of the knowledge they have about cross-channel shopping habits once they are equipped with the right technology to allow their consumers to research, purchase, track, receive, and return their merchandise across any combination of channels.
David Hogg is retail industry executive at
business software provider Sterling Commerce.
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