media

What is Digital Product Marketing?

Although Product Marketing is growing as a discipline across both B2B and B2C digitally driven businesses, it’s challenging to find a clear definition of what the the role entails, even when you search on Google. So what is Product Marketing? Lets take a look.

In organisations, the role sits at the intersection of product, sales and marketing, meaning the role can have a large impact on growth — but also means that the role can be hard to clearly define.

In a nutshell, Product Marketers work with Product Owners and Sales Leads to define a products proposition and take it to market, driving it’s overall success in achieving product market fit, with a deep understanding of the customer.

To do this, Product Marketers need to have a broad marketing skill set ranging from strategic to technical, and have a focus on clearly articulating the products proposition, messaging and target customer groups, before they then stimulate demand and drive acquisition of these customers.

Product Marketing Starts with Proposition & Positioning

A great product goes nowhere if it doesn’t get the attention of the people who would love it. So Product Marketers start with research into, who’s going to be the audience for the product, how (and where) are you going to reach them, and what the best way to present the product to them will be.

An NBR article a year or so ago stated research that only  .0025% of new products go on to achieve product market fit within the first three to five years of their life in NZ.  This leads to significant waste, a loss of economic opportunity and is materially different to other countries, positioning is a tool that can have significant impact on improving this metric.

Often the key reason for businesses initially implementing Product Marketing support is to tackle this problem of market fit through positioning. A products positioning in market can have a huge impact on a businesses success or failure, as it immediately short cuts in the head of your customers who your competitive set is. For example, if you positioned your product as a generic enterprise management system you are competing with the Salesforce’s of the world, however if you positioned it as a niche real estate lead management system instead, despite perhaps having the same product feature set, you could dramatically increase the uptake of the product by enthusiastic customers through solving their specific need.

Great examples of this would be Tinder & AirBnb who both had to relaunch to their current brand positioning before seeing success in market – Tinder was initially called MatchBox “the flirting game”.

Product Marketers Grow Brand Through Customer Focused Go-To- Market Messaging

Product Marketers then lead the development of go-to-market messaging to ensure they present the right message in the right channel to the right customer group. They create the communications framework that gives products the edge in their market to get exponential returns on marketing spend.

Building a strong brand positioning baked into your messaging is a key driver for long term business profitability, it will be the wind in your sails across all facets of business activity. Research has shown that brand affinity to be the second largest driver of purchase decision after price, as reflected in this chart from Millward Brown mapping the share performance of the BrandZ 100 top brands out performing the S&P. 500 2006 to 2008.

As well as messaging, it is also crucial that the product experience lives up to the story you tell in the market, in the digital age, brand and product are being brought closer together then ever before. The way the customers engage with your product is a crucial code in developing your brand. Not only the feature set but the engagement communications around the product and the way the product looks in terms of design, needs to reflect the positioning in market.

Product Marketers Acquire Customers Through Targeted Performance Marketing

Product Marketer’s typically leverage growth marketing techniques with targeted digitally driven advertising to customer groups. They aim to drive measurable acquisition & retention of customers to a product in the most efficient way possible as the product they are marketing is typically at start up or scale up stage where funds are tight and broadcast marketing techniques are not possible.

More then ever they are spearheading usage of AI & Data Driven marketing technology platforms to maximise the return on ad spend. This combination of brand and performance marketing brought together by Product Marketers is unique to the discipline, and incredibly powerful for gaining market share for products.

Finally, Product Marketing vs Product Ownership

An often asked question, what is the difference between Product Marketing & Product Ownership?

In a nutshell:

A Product Owner’s job is to create and develop new products and features, Product Marketing’s job is help define them and to bring them to market.

References:

https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/how-make-kiwi-smes-world-storming-fr-p-216825

http://www.millwardbrown.com/docs/default-source/insight-documents/published-books/millwardbrown_thebusinessofbrands.pdf

Hyper Local, Hyper Annoying?

Imagine a future where we are constantly bombarded by notifications as we wander down the road  using our mobiles, innocently passing by shops. Now imagine just how frustrating that could be if not managed carefully. To quote a recent tweet from R/GA, if this is the future of location-relevant advertising, I’ll stick with my trusty Sunday circular, thank you very much.

If not done carefully, these types of things appear more like an attempt to ride the wave of social media than an opportunity to deliver a truly charming customer experience that returns any real long term sales.

At first these ideas seem logical, target people who are already instore with an offer as they are already there in a shopping mindset. However unless executed with care, I feel it will do more to irritate people then actually sell to them.

Advertising is a blunt instrument, we focus on such a granular segmentation at our peril.

There is a fine line between spam & information, we must take take to intelligently use the growing quantity of data we have available on our customers and deliver messages that are relevant and on brand or up comes the spam filter!

The Gen Z Shopper & Participation Branding

I was recently reading an article on Inside Retail about a report on “Gen Z” by Fitch which really crystallized for me a tangible indication of how the face of retail is changing and an insight into how we need to change our communication strategies to suit – in particular around the concept of Participation Branding and creating ideas that make the most of our bought, owned & earned media channels.

Gen Z, classed as those born after 1995 are hard wired to be cautious of standard marketing ploys and particularly happy to browse before making an informed purchase. A key finding from the report for me was that they demonstrated a “real gap between seeing & buying” enabled mostly by digital platforms such as social media, search or price comparison sites. Essentially the Gen Z shopper can go through a long period of what they termed “Aspirational Browsing” where they may set their sights on products far in advance of actually making a purchase. As agencies this means we need to change the way we communicate as the typical broadcast campaign based methodology is simply not going to be as effective in generating immediate sales with this audience and we need to be present across the omni-channel environment to take advantage of the long tail of our bought, owned and earned media online to ensure we get infront of them at the right time during this extended purchase funnel.

As they said in the report, “It’s all about keeping the brand and potential purchase front of mind during this extended aspirational browse period”. See the below diagram for a visual representation of this process, essentially digital platforms and connectivity enable the consumer to more easily discover, browse, buy and share then ever before.

So how can we overcome or capture the interest of these people during this period of delayed gratification? We have to make sure that our messaging is spread across our digital brand ecosystem through our bought, owned & earned channels so that whilst we will have a big spike in activity across our campaign period, the content lives on so it will be there when and where our Gen Z consumer is browsing or ready to purchase. I recently attended a talk in which the idea of “Participation Branding” was presented, which reflects how we can change our communication strategies to suit this extended period of digital browsing. Participation branding was defined as the below:

“How a brand engages and behaves with consumers across channels and over time to earn their attention and participation through motivating stories and experiences.”

By weaving digital experiences into our campaigns we create an element of interactivity for our ideas which encourages participation by these digitally enabled shoppers. This means that we can actually harness this new shopping behaviour as a positive for our brands and use it spread our message across our brand ecosystem by engaging them through this period of aspirational browsing. In terms of our approach it’s simply just adding another set of tools to our arsenal on top of brand marketing & direct response in the form of social influence marketing:

Participation Branding
Brand Marketing	Direct Response Marketing	Social Influence Marketing

By ensuring we use media neutral ideas that propogate digital content and experiences across our bought, owned & earned channels, we start to rally participation and engagement in the brand which builds a digital trail of content or “brand ecosystem” over time. This allows us to take advantage of the long tail of this content by having it live on after the campaigns which means it will be there in the consideration set when the Gen Z shopper is browsing or comparing to make sure we are top of mind – whether it’s during the campaign period or months after when they are looking to purchase. See below a chart from the same presentation which shows how the spikes of campaigns help to build our overall ecosystem over time.

It’s an exciting time to be in both the retail and communications businesses, the way people consume media and even the way they browse and shop is changing as fast as technology allows. However as long as we continue to create engaging ideas that get infront of the right people at the right time, we will continue to see results – some things never change!

Author: Alex Leece

The Curated Future Of News Radio

The digital content disruption continues. Whilst print media have been grappling with this for some time and the music industry has also been coming to terms with new forms of content distribution such as Spotify, it appears the next frontier of curation could be news & information content. Whilst this has typically been the domain of public radio, with a combination of location services and curated content from around the world we have started to see a new wave of applications which empower the user to curate their own news rather than rely on local radio to do it for them.

Early examples of this are Agogo and Swell. Recently launched, they pose a new challenge to traditional media outlets by creating new listening experiences for consumers of talk and news. They bring together segments of audio from news sites around the world into customizable and curated streams based around themes such as Business & Finance or Sports. Whilst they can also provide limited local information such as traffic reports based on location services, public radio still has the upper hand in terms of local content creation with the power of their own local journalists and talent. This is something that still gives public radio the upper hand for the moment – somebody needs to create the content in the first place.

However continuing the overarching trend of media money moving into digital, these types of platforms will no doubt over time see more of our traditional media money moved into digital and mobile whether they are independent apps or locally owned by networks, watch this space!

Alex

What Is Engagement?

What is real engagement with content? It’s a term often used these days and most often associated with digital media. Can it really be illustrated as simply as clicking to view a video or entering a competition, how do we know if people had a real connection with the content and your brand when doing so?

To me it is more about people being moved on an emotional level, getting into their brains and giving them an association to hang your brand on. It is more about the extent to which someone retained and enjoyed what they experienced of your brand rather than simply how many times it was done. Unfortunately for us, this qualitative nature is a lot harder to deliver measurables on than quantitative. It’s this immeasurable element that can make good advertising so special. I think it’s also important to note up front that when discussing content, this could be anything from a printed ad in a newspaper to an Adshel in a bus shelter or a video on Youtube.

In an attempt to try and measurably quantify what engagement really is and how engaged people actually were, Nielsen asks to what extent the subject agrees with the content across three pillars: Funny, Emotionally Touching, Informative. Broadly speaking any piece of content would fit into one of those three categories in terms of what it is trying to achieve in terms of enagement, if it ranks on this then it’s doing it’s job. Looking at it through the lens of these three axis helps us to begin to examine how engaged people really were with the content and in what capacity. If someone can associate after the fact, a degree of connection across one of these pillars with a piece of content, I believe that shows that they were engaged by it. To try and manage this at a strategic level up front, you could for example map “Engagement Profiles” of the content based on to what extent you think they should rank across these pillars in the consumers mind. Is the content designed to be humorous and a little informative? Or simply about creating an emotional brand connection? 

The content above is something that whilst rating quite strongly across all axis, is predominantly geared towards being funny whilst capturing an emotional connection with the brand, to a lesser extent delivering a product message. The consumer behaviour you’d hope to see from content such as this is people enjoying it, sharing their experience of it with their friends and hopefully as a by product driving brand awareness and revenue. On this note, as Clay Shirky says, “behaviour is motivation filtered through opportunity” and technology has changed the opportunity space in many ways. Now that technology has made it so easy to measure peoples immediate behaviour with online content (like, share, tweet etc), as advertisers it is all too easy to focus on measuring this as successful engagement rather than a longer term qualitative behaviour change. Not only does this ignore all other media channels it also can’t measure that emotional side of true engagement. To quote Faris Yakob,” If a piece of branded anything falls in the woods and no one Tweets about it  – did it have any effect?”.

The concept that “good work works” hasn’t changed and will never do so, it will always be that the interesting content will deliver greater than usual engagement. What has changed is how people consume it and what they do with it. We must be careful not to solely focus on using these easy to access short term metrics as barometers of this and keep in mind the immeasurable emotional connections which people have with brands built over time from true engagement across all media. To end, an open letter to all advertising that has been floating around the internet for a while but I think it sums it up quite nicely.

Alex

Innovation & The Connected Mind

Innovation. A term often bandied around and something that all forward thinking companies strive to deliver in spades. The question is, how can companies take advantage of this elusive trait, is it something a person is born with or is it something that a company can cultivate as a product of the cultural environment? If the environment does indeed play a part, then increasingly how might the use of digital technology to connect ourselves and our ideas effects this process?

When you first consider the term innovation, you may be forgiven for thinking that it concerns a moment of great insight, which happens with people who are inherently “innovative”. It’s a term that has alot of myths attached to it. I came across the below table from an HBR Article which addresses these quite nicely.

Innovation Myths

Myth	Reality
Innovation is random	Innovation is a discipline — it can be measured and managed. Consider how Procter & Gamble’s structured approach to innovation allowed it to triple its innovation success rate and double the size of a typical initiative.
Only creative geniuses can innovate	Innovation is distinct from creativity. While creativity can help, people who aren’t intrinsically creative can create high-impact innovation if they follow the right process.
You’re either an innovator or you’re not	Research recounted in The Innovator’s DNA described how innovation is about 30 percent nature and 70 percent nurture.
Innovation happens in the R&D lab	Innovation — something different that has impact — can happen anywhere in an organization. Everyone should be looking for new ways to solve old problems.
We will win with superior technology	Most market disruptions rest on innovative business models — new ways to create, capture, or deliver value
Innovation is all about improved performance	Sometimes innovation is about improving performance along traditional dimensions, but some of the most powerful disruptive innovations sacrifice raw performance in the name of accessibility or affordability.*
Our customers will be a critical source of innovation insight	Your customers might tell you how to make your current offering better, but they won’t point the way to disruptive growth; you have to explore new markets in new ways to identify new growth businesses.
Game changing innovation is done only by entrepreneurs	Many of the most exciting disruptions in recent years — such as GE’s low cost imaging solution and Cisco’s TelePresence solution — have come from big companies
We will win by targeting the biggest markets	Markets that don’t exist are difficult to precisely measure or analyze; the most powerful innovations create new markets.
Innovation requires big bets	As our friend Peter Sims writes in Little Bets, if you want to win big, you should start small.

The couple of points that really stood out for me here is that there is an aspect of nuture involved in innovation and that it is something that can occur throughout the company, not just in the R&D lab. This suggests that it is certainly something a company can cultivate and can be driven by anyone across the business at any time. How can businesses use this to their advantage? There has been a recent proliferation of new titles in our industry involving innovation, Chief Innovation Officer, Director of Innovation and the list goes on. Whilst these may seem like invented positions to try to convey a sense that the company is innovative, I believe that companies need people on the fringe who push forward new thinking. This often means they isolate themselves from others resistant to change, being at the forefront can be a lonely place to be. People like this can really help to drive new thinking over time by stirring the pot and provoking discussion. More then this though, ensuring companies support people to pursue new ideas and realising that they can come from anyone at any time is crucial.

Further to this, from an environmental point of view, in an age of increasing connectivity within the company through digital technology, could this have a positive effect on innovation?  This seems to be the case. I recently watch an interesting video by Stephen Johnson on Where Good Ideas Com From:

In it, he puts forward the concept of the “slow hunch”. This hypothesizes that most great ideas don’t come from a moment of great insight, but a slow building hunch that when combined with other peoples hunches creates a new concept or innovation. This suggests that digital technology allowing us to interact in real time with people quickly and easily to share ideas may have a positive effect on innovation. Twitter is a good example of this idea sharing in action, people all around the world collaborate around topics and share their ideas. Essentially being constantly connected creates faster feedback loops between people allowing ideas to bounce off each other at a faster rate.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in future as much like Moore’s, Kryder’s & Gilder’s laws see an increasing rate of change in technology, so to may this apply to the new ideas that spring from it.

Alex

Cultural Latency – Easy Come, Easy Go

It seems like everything is becoming more disposable these days. As we become more connected and have always on access to content that we can engage with and distribute in real time, what effect does this have on the life cycle of content?

Previously creating content was the domain of specialists and distributing it was restricted to those with money and corporate backing through well established networks. Mail was delivered in days rather than seconds and news content was printed and delivered to your door. Even music took time to distribute through retail outlets on vinyl or CD. Now just about anyone with a PC and an internet connection can create and rapidly share their ideas and content. I was reading over Faris Yakob’s post in which he raised an interesting point about what he termed Cultural Latency, in that there is a correlation between

“the amount of time it takes to distribute something, and the amount of time it takes for that thing to have an effect, and consequently the amount of time that thing stays relevant and interesting.”

Essentially research has found evidence to back up the saying, easy come, easy go. A 2009 study found that a fall of an item’s popularity seems to mirror that of it’s rise (see graph above). They discovered this in studying the popularity of names in France & US over the last 100 years. They hypothesize that whilst there is no mathematical reason behind this phenomenon, it is driven by people’s beliefs creating the reality, probably stemming from the fact that it gets to a point where people don’t like to be thought to follow the mainstream. It is an example of the interrelationship of how psychological processes can shape culture and that culture can shape thought processes.

Now that digital technology is reducing the friction points within any given distribution system, it is making them more efficient and is causing this effect to become quite evident in the life span of content. Content can spread and become popular faster then ever before, I guess we’d call this “going viral”. This has the effect of creating much faster feedback loops, information is delivered and consumed faster, which triggers more effects in quick succession. This rapid rise has the flow on effect of potentially leading to much faster cultural decay. Just take music for example, you can see bands come from nowhere with a manufactured hit then just as quickly disappear off the radar.

So what does this all mean? It certainly raises the case for slow and steady organic growth. Perhaps it’s not always better to go after a meteoric rise to fame but to consider the option of growing at a slower pace. Obviously this would depend on the content or objectives behind the strategy of the campaign but an interesting point to consider when considering a brand or content strategy.

Alex

Big Data & In Memory Computing

Big Data is a term coined to describe the data deluge we are currently experiencing. It’s no secret that we are living in a technology driven society that generates an ever increasing amount of data as we go about our daily lives. “Always on” is a term that is often heard and more often then not, when we are “on” we are creating data about ourselves, our likes and our dislikes, our network of friends both professional and social, and even our travel habits. At the same time, businesses must also retain more and more information to manage themselves more efficiently across the board. In tough economic times there is an ever increasing recognition that organisations must use every single resource at their disposal to get ahead. This results in information and data that once might have been given little attention is now seen as worth its weight in gold if any perceived value can be derived from it.

Looking at the sources of this data, to start with there is of course the sales, operational and customer data that the business collects. On top of this there’s social media data from the likes of Facebook and Twitter including information around friend groups, likes/dislikes and sentiment analysis. There’s web search data, with transactional information or online customer reviews. There’s also data generated by location-based services and data from sensors, moniters and GPS embedded in a growing array of products from vehicles to appliances. I believe if we as advertisors can offer solutions to our clients of how we can process and utilise the growing amount of data available to help inform creative business solutions we could offer real value. To quote a recent Financial Times article

“The challenges are two-fold: First, to recognize the value of big data in mining customer needs and desires, and second, to devise a data management strategy that integrates big data into the front end of the innovation pipeline.” 

So how do businesses harness all the data that is being created and use it to inform their strategy and decision making? The challenge here is being able to process large amounts of data at speeds that make it useful. It’s very difficult to really make use of data in business decisions on an ongoing basis when it takes weeks to gather and process. Large software powerhouses such as SAP & Oracle have been bringing new tools to market for businesses to help solve this problem. In memory computing software is designed so organisations can analyse vast quantities of data in near real time across many sources. Essentially in-memory computing takes advantage of a better understanding of how data is formed and housed and the ever decreasing price of memory (discussed in my Technology vs Advertising post). Instead of housing data on a hard drive, data is stored in a computers memory. Therefore, when it needs to be analysed it is available in near real time. This increased power and speed also means that the computers can handle more unstructured data, important when data can come from so many different sources. On the back of this there would need to be a process for managing and delivering the data in an efficient manner and most importantly, in a way that is easy to understand and glean insights from.

Whilst I think caution must be taken not to let our ability to measure granular details bog down the creative process, at the end of the day, the more you know about your customers and can integrate those insights into your business strategies the more likely they are to improve revenue, margins and market share. Who wouldn’t want that leg up over the competition?

Alex

A Consideration of Charm

Today I was reading an essay in the February edition of Monocle magazine on charm and it got me thinking about that elusive quality, that is so hard to quantify, yet can make all the difference to someones opinion of a place or service. As they pointed out, you will never hear someone say “I was I were less charming”. It’s a quality that can’t be easily replicated (bad news for competitors) and I believe really helps to give your business a special place in peoples minds. Take Depot Eatery pictured above, as soon as you arrive you feel the place has a character which is replicated in the unpretentious yet delicious food.

How can we as advertisers help to create content and instore experiences that help to cultivate this elusive trait? I believe it has to start at the ground level instore, where the customer is interacting with your business and you really have the opportunity to control a branded experience. Create a service experience that is friendly and warm, where the customer feels a personal touch. In a larger retail advertising sense this comes down to utilising CRM and Instore channels. Using CRM databases to customise content delivered to customers, you could send out personalised mailers to letterboxes, exclusive deals to mobile phones or deliver on screen prompts to sales staff of the customers favourite products when the customer is at the point of sale. Also consider the design space and fit out of the store carefully. No longer is it simply enough to erect some shelving and place products on it, expecting them to sell. When instore, this is a retail or service businesses big opporunity to sell the brand in an age when people roundly ignore a large portion of the advertising messages out there. Think on brand, engaging and personal, of course all the while remembering we are in the business of selling!

In terms of bringing the message above the line, as a brand you must be true and honest. This is nothing new in terms of branding strategy but I think now more then ever it is important for your busiess to have a clear value proposition. Be proud of the qualities of your business that can’t be faked or replicated. Are your products wholly sourced from quality producers or do you have the widest curated range of fashion available for convenient purchase? It is no longer simply enough to just decide what your product or service is about through mass market channels, people see through this. Brands must now constantly live their values, throughout all touch points with the consumer to truely deliver a memorable experience.

So next time when someone wanders in with a Powerpoint describing in detail the customer journey, take a minute to think about at what point you will be charming the pants off them!

Alex

The Continuous Channel – The New Retail Frontier?

I recently watched a presentation by Steve Nave, former SVP & General Manager of Walmart.com and in it he raised the concept of the continuous channel as a new frontier for retailers. He talked about rather than seeing retail as a multi channel process, we should be taking a step back to look at the entire brand, letting customers shop the way they want to shop and bringing it all together into one continuous channel. Essentially instead of serving customers through individual channels, we serve them at touch points across channels by optimising the organisations processes and technologies. The picture on the left is a trial advertising program by Tesco in South Korea. In a “virtual store” concept, people could shop with their mobile phones whilst waiting for a train directly from an ambient installation set up to look like a store and have their groceries delivered to their home hours later. This is a great example of allowing shoppers to purchase in new ways, on their terms and across channels.

Traditionally there were only three channels which organisations could utilise to actively generate sales, the stores themselves, direct sales (phone/direct marketing) and printed catalogues. These channels essentially each only had a single touch point within them. This has now all changed with the advent of the internet and the establishment of ecommerce as a legitimate channel. The internet differs from the three traditional channels in that it doesn’t simply create one touch point but a vast array of new ones. It feeds emerging technologies as it expands into mobile, tablet, TVs, instore, cars and not to mention social media. The key thing to note here is that when you think about it, none of these new touch points are actually a new channel in themselves, they are all being fed by the existing internet channel. The opportunity here for retailers is that increasingly everything is becoming a touchpoint with which consumers can transact with your organisation. Whilst this may sound similar to the concept of multi-channel retailing, the difference is in the thinking of how the channels and touch points intersect together and how the organization responds to the customer across them to drive sales.

For this to work, information, and data must flow freely between channels on the customer end and within the business units of the organisation, no silos. Customers more and more expect to be able to shop across channels, for example purchasing an item via mobile and collecting it instore. They need to be able to shop when and how they want to, customers shop with your company as a whole, not with an individual channel. With this in mind we can look at new ways to intersect them. I think whilst it may be very hard to truly get to a point where this is fully achieved but it is a good journey to be on and will help drive retailing into the future.

The Walmart example that Steve discussed is a good one to look at in terms of a big retailer testing out initiatives which cross the channel boundaries. Walmart has implemented the below strategies with their ecommerce platform that go some way to letting the customer shop their way and intersects both instore and internet enabled channels:

Site to Store – customers could purchase products online and have them sent to their local store for collection.

Pick Up Today – customers can view a stores stock online, purchase and put it on hold knowing it’s ready for them when they arrive in store to collect it.

Scheduled Delivery From Store – customers can order something online from a store and schedule the delivery for when they want it to arrive at their home.

These strategies are interesting in not only do they cross the typical “channel” boundaries, but really add utility for the customer.

Looking forward, Steve identified the below future milestones he thought to be criticial to driving the continuous channel strategy going for Walmart:

–Social – not just in a setting up a Facebook page way but really looking at what the intersection is between business and social. They started an initiative called “Walmart Labs” to explore new technology around understanding what people are talking about in social media. With that insight, then as brands we can come to people and be relevant to them and the local community TODAY in new ways. For example we could use the information to influence what store staff talk to customers about when they enter the store, the POS instore, or what new initiatives stores can do for people. It’s about more then just sending emails of a relevant sale to people who have indicated they like blenders on Facebook.

-Mobile – This will help drive the continuous channel as a future for ecommerce. Customers are turning to mobile devices more and more for information when they want it quickly. To help keep pace in this area, Walmart are going so far as acquiring tech company start ups to remain agile and take advantage of the latest advances in technology.

-New Store Models – Can ecommerce begin to help influence store layout? Walmart are now siting the online division at the table when discussing how stores are designed to help bring online into the bricks and mortar channel. For example we don’t necessarily need the store floor space to show all products if we can back it up with online channels. For example you could show just 3 digital cameras in each price point, knowing 300 more are online which we can get to store for someone today, or to their home.

Whilst we won’t see the end of bricks and mortar stores, customers will always have something to do instore, (a point I touched on in my post Why Bricks and Mortar Stores Will Always Have a Role to Play) retailers will need to rethink their operational strategy to keep up with how consumers expect to be able to shop, on their terms, across channels.

Alex