Multi-Channel Optimization: Using Business Intelligence And Customer Demand Data To Reshape Retailing

More than a decade ago, during the first wave of the e-commerce boom, there were some hyperbolic pronouncements that online shopping would revolutionize the entire retail industry practically overnight. While that has turned out to be an overstatement, both in terms of actual e-commerce sales and the time frame for change, there was more than a grain of truth in those 1990s-era predictions. The changes that multi-channel retailing has already made, and continues to make, in the retail industry, along with the opportunities it presents, are indeed reshaping retailing—albeit at an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary pace.

These opportunities go well beyond retailers' enhanced abilities to reach the increasingly valuable multi-channel consumer. They even go further than the ability to dig deeply into customer data in order to create highly targeted marketing vehicles and personalized merchandising assortments—although gaining this 360-degree view of the customer is a crucial element in multi-channel optimization.