Will you survive - not going online?

ForeSee Results recently did a study about customer satisfaction on 40 major retail web-sites. Here the pure play online retailers where the best delivering a good experience before, during and after the sale. And multi-channel retailers did significantly underperform.

Maybe it’s because multi-channel retailers have more channels to diverts corporate attention and focus – maybe it’s because pure play online retailers holds the most knowledge in management. And many of the largest online pure players have also used a significant amount on building their organization etc.

The very best example is the book industry allowing Amazon to grow to be a $22 billion company. My theory is that the book retailers have allowed it to happen - because they haven’t leveraged their biggest assets into the fight, which are the stores and highly qualified employees.

Every other industry are facing the same level of competition, or will do, from online pure players growing large enough to fight the biggest retailers.

The secret weapon against Amazon and others pure on liners is multi-channel retailing - because consumers love being able to get their product immediately. They love being able to touch, feel and see it. They love being able to return it easily in-store. There are a lot of things that consumers love about the multi-channel experience. For the retailers that have done it, it’s paid off big time for them.

Further down this report examples about successful multi-channel retailers are shown.

For the retailers who are asleep and ignoring this, they’re basically saying to “Amazon”, “Please steal our business because we’re not going to leverage our assets and you’re welcome to steal our customers.”

Many organizations still doesn’t invest heavily enough in multi-channel and eCommerce. They still think that it’s something marketing can do in their spare time.

Online pure players do what they are best at – “Making business online” – and many of them have grown pretty large and are using the digital opportunities by “e”-ing everything from customer intelligence in Customer Clubs, digital catalogues with e for commerce – buy and get delivered ….

Have you chosen to be among the surviving retailers – taking your part of the online pie. 

Not saying that many retailers won’t survive not going online – but will you as maybe a dominant retailer in your segment in your area, let an online pure player eat of your pie?

One could state: "Is your business the next Amazon eaten ..."