What is multi-channel retailing
- IS: Operating a single retail organisation that has multiple touch points
- Clear benefits in offering more integrated channels to the end-user.
And only the future will set limits for the number of touch points. Meaning that inventions will create new ways of communicating with customers, making business and doing fulfillment - for an even more convenient and integrated shopping experience.
Today the two major channels are physical retail stores and PC browser based Internet shopping and browsing. Customers can easily be browsers on the web and purchasing customers in the retail store. Then the web in influencing the purchase – which will be reality for 38% of all retail purchases in 2012 regarding to Forrester.
Besides the primary browsing and purchasing touch points resides in store eKiosks and mobile devices as well as mail-order catalogues. The printed catalogues are today used as online purchase drivers with nearly 70% of all orders coming from catalogues being typed in online (meaning huge reduced callcenter costs). eKiosks are used in stores for inspiration to marketing material and for purchases. Mobile devices are primarily used for customer service follow up and fulfillment – “Your online ordered parcel has now arrived to your local store” and so on.
1 comment:
Multichannel retailing presently links not just to the existence of more channels but also to the previous notion of just one, THE retail level. I think this'll be a thing of the past. In fact the process is not unlike what is happening to content like video, games, music. It may be experiences, goods, items for consumption and ownership. But the access and obtainability is online, onsite and soon on-damned-near-everything. Content with just one outlet, one point of sales/access/tracking, is dead content.
In that light it is not altogether uninteresting to read a report on the music industry from Forrester just out last week that's entitled "The death of the music industry as we know it".
It's all in our own heads!
1997 was a golden year for the music industry, CD sales soared, life was great. 1999 a measly 6% accounted for Online CD sales. To the single-channeled mind, this was a definite proof that the Internet was no great way of selling music.
The lesson to take away from this is not yet another slap on the wrist to an industry in death moans, but rather a reminder that there is alway more angles to a story. Perhaps everything is, essentially, multichannel.
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