CHANNEL-HOPPING SHOPPERS
“today’s typical customer journey involves a great many more channels than simply browsing in a store”
and collect” should be far easier to manage than for the specialty chains, since many already have customer collection points and the processes in places to handle telephone orders so adding web orders should be straightforward. The same applies to returns, giving department stores an immediate cross-channel advantage over chains where stock assortments can vary significantly between outlets. Most will also either already
have, or be working towards, a single customer database logging transactions and orders from every channel. Some retailers are already starting to augment this with information from Facebook and other social media networks adding details of their best customer’s likes and dislikes to improve target marketing. Numerous studies also confirm that cross-channel shoppers expect and welcome personalised targeted offers based on their declared preferences. Identifying customers in-
store before they buy, in order to make appropriate offers based on their known preferences, is something that retailers have been trying to do for years and
is at the heart of traditional clienteling. Systems are now appearing which automate the “little black books” of upmarket clienteling by equipping sales staff with tablets such as iPads, or smaller hand-held computers, capable of accessing those single customer databases. Mobile apps can also be used to automatically identify regular customers who are happy to be “known” while face recognition technology already exists that could use images gleaned from Facebook to identify the
“unknown”. Given information about a shopper’s favourite brands or recent purchases and the skilled associate is well on the way to closing the sale. This year’s Internet Retailing
Conference in October will be focusing both on how the individual customer experience can be personalised and improved, as well as how retailers can achieve that vital brand consistency across channels.
For more information visit
www.internetretailingexpo.com
DepartmentRetailer.co.uk | Department Store News | 23
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