72% of US online shoppers have a membership to an eCommerce marketplace such as Amazon or eBay. This guide will show you what retail tactics you should prioritize to win online shoppers in the year ahead
What worked in the past may not be right today or even ten minutes from now. Small to mid-sized retailers often don’t have the flex or resources to react to the hills and valleys of peak season. But the $1.75 trillion ghost economy (cost of overstocks, out-of-stocks and returns) is clear proof that every retailer needs to be prepared to pivot in real-time, especially during the holidays.
In the age of the consumer, every retailer must create the exceptional Amazon-like service experiences that consumers expect or risk going out of business.
Starting a business can be hard. Growing your business can be even harder. Whether it’s poor customer data, manual and broken processes, minimal operations visibility to make decisions, building a winning team, or keeping up with changing regulations, there is always something getting in the way of growth. These barriers hurt sales, cost money and create risk.
The current media reporting on the state of retail stores paints a doom and gloom picture. Almost every day there are headlines of bankruptcy filings and store closures suggesting that the retail apocalypse is here. It’s clear that the retail industry is going through a transformational period that has many scaling back physical operations, but despite the news, people still want to—and still do—shop in stores.
If you asked the stakeholders in your business whether packaging is perceived as an unwanted cost or a value driving innovation, what would they say?
Is this situation familiar? You invest your time and energy developing products for the market, and develop a supply chain model to ensure these new products make it to customers in a timely manner. Then, you invest further in well-crafted brand promises implemented to the finest detail within your style guide. Next, you transfer the whole bundle to the OEM and ask: “when can we start shipping?”. Rarely, up to this point, has any thought been given to transit packaging. Let’s be honest – the feeling is, you have invested all that time in developing the product, how hard can it be to get the package right? Famous last words indeed.
Is packaging the magic ingredient in your global supply chain? It certainly has the power to make or break your global operations.
Most retailers are missing out on a major opportunity for cost savings in their supply chain. It’s not because the opportunity is complicated - quite the contrary. The idea is so simple most retailers probably think it’s already being handled. But when you’re talking about shipping from Asia, what you think is happening and what is actually happening with your packaging material, performance specifications and freight utilization are rarely the same. So, what do you do?
Being prepared for the holiday rush used to mean stocking shelves and making sure your associates were ready for the long hours. But the digital revolution has changed everything, most importantly, customer expectations. Retailers with a physical store presence should be asking themselves—what am I doing to wow the customer?
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