5 ways to keep retail customers loyal

Strategies For Brick-and-Mortar Retailers to Fight Online Competition

to Keep Retail

Customers Loyal

in the Age of Showrooming

Strategies For Brick-and-Mortar Retailers

to Fight Online Competition

© faberNovel 2012 • • 2

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Brick and mortar retailers have been facing serious challenges lately

Source: JiWire Mobile Audience Insights 2012

• • •

of U.S mobile consumers

are expected to use their

phone while shopping in-store

in the 2012 holiday season

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Retailers are well aware of the danger they are facing

of physical retailers expect to be affected by showrooming in 2012

but only

Source: Edgell Knowledge Network/eBay Local

have a strategy in place to combat it

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Amazon and other e-retailers are exploiting this fact to press their advantage over

their offline competitors

But this collapse goes both ways – and it can be used to the physical store’s

advantage just as easily as it can be used to Amazon’s

The fact is this: the barrier between online and offline retail has collapsed

Lower overhead costs

Broader inventory Frictionless payment Quick, convenient delivery

Instant access to comparisons

With that in mind, here are

five ways for

brick-and-mortar retailers to fight back against e-commerce

competitors and keep

customers in their stores…

Give your staff

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1 Give your staff the answer to every question a customer could ask

Empower your employees with mobile tools that let them quickly and easily access information on every

product in your store

Today’s brick-and-mortar stores can – and should –

be just like online stores: full of all the information necessary to help customers make informed decisions

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“Once we make sure this iPad works all stores will be

equipped with iPod touches and iPads.”

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2 Use showrooming as an opportunity to engage the customer

Give your employees the information they need to intelligently engage customers around competing

offers

Recommendation:

Comparison shopping via mobile device is just that – a comparison between offers There’s no reason your offer should not come out on top, especially with the home-field advantage

Give employees tools for engaging customers on competing offers and showing them why your offer is better

in the big picture (and of course your offer does need to be better in the big picture )

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“Once customers are in our stores, they’re ours to lose.”

Hubert Joly

-  CEO

Best Buy, the 2011 poster child for showrooming, recently announced they were embracing it as a part of their strategy for getting business back on track

Their reasoning? Anything that brings live customers into their stores can’t be all bad

Source: RetailWire, CBS News

Their plan calls for converting showroomers from browsers into buyers through online price-matching incentives and better-trained employees

Better serve

your customer

by gathering

hard data about

what they want

3

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3 Better serve your customer by gathering hard data about what they want

Build in-store analytics tools to radically improve intelligence on shoppers’ desires and behaviors

Recommendation:

Online retailers know a lot about what their customers like – because they collect data on them with every click

But the savvy physical retailer can develop even more refined analytics than websites, taking advantage of the customer’s physical presence to collect better, more nuanced data

You can then use that data to give your

customers more of what they want

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“Our role as the tech team is to provide operations with everything they need to make an impact on conversion

with minimal effort.”

Stacey Shulman

- CTO

In 2010 American Apparel began experimenting with in-store analytics with analytics startup RetailNext, which monitors movement through stores to produce up to 10,000 data points per customer

They liked the solution so much that it’s now in over half

of American Apparel stores – and they're moving as fast

as they can to get it into the rest

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4 Eliminate lines and let your customers check out instantly

Create a checkout system that lets customers complete a purchase instantly anywhere in the store

Recommendation:

Shoppers have grown used to one-click shopping from any device online They have every right to expect similar convenience when they decide to shop offline

Eliminate the biggest source of POS friction – the cash register – and allow employees (or even customers themselves!) to swipe a card anywhere

in the store

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“They can change my purchasing decision right there on the spot, which has never been done before in the history of retail in a brick-

and-mortar store.”

Ryan Taft

- OnSpot Social

Wal-Mart is experimenting with a Scan & Go iPhone app that allows shoppers to scan items themselves and pay at special self-service

kiosks located throughout the store

Source: RetailWire, CBS News

The company reports that it can save $12 million for every second it can shave off the typical checkout process

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5 Give your customers a speedy home delivery option

Offer courier services that leverage stores’ proximity

to the customer to give better home delivery than

even the web can provide

Recommendation:

Online shoppers love the convenience

of having purchases delivered straight

to their door But distant distribution centers for online stores can mean long shipping times

Retail stores near residential areas can fill this missing link and beat online retailers hands-down – combining the in-store shopping experience with the convenience of immediate delivery

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Clothing retailer Macy’s recently partnered with eBay to try out their new courier system eBay Now The service promises to deliver products “from your phone to your door in about an hour.”

The system, which has been in beta in San Francisco for a few months, went live in New York City over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend

For a $5.00 fee, a courier will deliver your purchase directly to your home (or wherever else you need it) by car, bike or even by foot

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The future of retail is an online-offline continuum Make it work for you

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Retail will look very different in the future than it did in the past

And we are already moving rapidly towards this vision

But these changes need not be feared by brick-and-mortar retailers Those that embrace opportunities to merge the best of online and offline retail into a seamless, unified shopping experience will come out as the

top players in a new generation of retail stores

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