NEWS
JC Penney brings back its Big Book catalogue
Finally the penny has dropped. Shelve the catalogue, shed the customers. JC Penney is to recommence production of its Big Book catalogue after five long years during which is tlost swathes of good customers. Its hefty catalogues which
were launched way back in 1963 were often 1000 pagers, waited for and loved by customers. Tey drove store traffic, they generated huge sales in their own right, but in comes a new management which doesn’t quite get the correlation between the seemingly high costs of catalogue design, production and distribution – and sales. Tus, against all expert advice, the big book catalog was discontinued in 2009 with its smaller niche catalogue editions following suit in 2010. Tose at JC Penney held the firm belief that its catalogue customers would simply switch to buying online but what they hadn’t factored was that it is print that drives the bulk of online sales in most markets – and many place online orders for the items they have chosen from catalogues. Or from ads or inserts or editorial coverage in the press, or from their own customer magazines. And it isn’t just an older generation thing as some might have us believe.
Te JC Penney catalogue
was akin in many ways to the tomes issued here by the likes of Freemans, Great Universal Stores, Littlewoods which drove massive sales in their heydays. Here in the UK we have seen what happens when some of our long established “mail order businesses” decide to cut their catalogue volumes, or indeed, eliminate the catalogue entirely. We read announcements about business transformations and modernisations that use the argument of the savings that can be achieved by reducing dependency on the catalogue without considering the role that catalogues play. Tighter targeting has a place of course and no one will argue that it is cheap to produce and circulate great catalogues. It is no surprise that we see an increasing number of retailers producing catalogues for customers to take away from their stores and order from. Or a growing number of retailers using door drop distribution or local/regional/national press inserts. Let’s not forget either that customers love to receive catalogues and keenly await new editions from their favourite retailers and that catalogues inspire a level of loyalty which a website and an email programme do not.
Avalara & Shopgate announce partnership to boost global mobile payments
Avalara Inc., a provider of cloud-based transactional tax compliance solutions, and Shopgate, a software-as-a-service m-commerce platform, have announced a new global partnership that will help merchants remain tax compliant when taking mobile payments. Te partnership strengthens Avalara’s support of the
mobile commerce industry by integrating AvaTax™, Avalara’s proven sales tax compliance solution, into the Shopgate mobile commerce platform. Te collaboration will allow Shopgate to offer its merchants fully-automated sales tax compliance services
as it expands into North America, whilst continuing to support its 5,500+ merchants across Europe. Shopgate’s 5,500+ merchants serve millions of customers
every day, integrating with over 60 of the world’s most popular shopping carts and cooperating with the leading mobile and ecommerce companies so that online customers can shop anytime, anywhere. Avalara supports automated tax calculation in over 100 countries, combining its vast proprietary database with address validation and geolocation, applying the correct taxability rules and rates and handling filing and remittance.
Direct Commerce |
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