Following the announcement today of the government’s support for Mary Portas’ plans to rejuvenate UK high streets, Adam Stewart, Marketing Director of Rakuten’s Play.com argues why retailers are facing the need to acclimatise to a new connected retail environment.
Mary Portas’ ‘reinvigorating high streets’ report and the government response shows the need for a change in how the retail sector operates. The decline of the high street is often linked to the increase in online sales, but a critique of the report was that it overlooked e-commerce completely. It’s important to note that the e-commerce sector, rather than cannibalising the high street, can be integral to revitalising it, encouraging offline sales, as well as customer loyalty. For example, by offering a voucher via mobile to redeem at the nearest store using location based services.
Today’s shopper is a complex beast. They engage with a wide variety of channels when coming to a decision about what to buy and where to buy it. It’s important that retailers realise the potential to link the online and offline experience. They need to be pulled together into a coherent retail strategy by merchants if they are to maximise their bottom line but how to do this effectively can be understandably daunting for businesses, not least for small-to-medium sized retailers.
There are challenges however in linking the online and offline shopping experiences. Retailers are fusing their digital and real-world offerings with barcode scanning services such as ShopSavvy to help users find the best deal, but by allowing them to scan the barcode and search for better offers online, the application fails to reward the store whose display instigated the purchase. To avoid cannibalising the high-street we believe a new system must emerge, one that rewards the merchant for both their offline and online ecosystems.
On this changing high street, implementation of a well thought-out multichannel platform will lead to a rise in sales, as well as new customers, increased brand loyalty and a better customer experience. The best way for high street retailers to initiate such an approach lies in partnering with a company that understands both the offline and online worlds. If these two can be unified into a cohesive sales strategy, both offline and online retailers will benefit from increased sales, and shoppers will be empowered to interact with the brand in the way that suits them best. For Yonayona, a Japanese brewery, online customers were the key to the success of the beer being stocked on supermarket shelves. After seeing the beer online, customers proactively requested their local shops to stock it leading to greater offline, as well as online sales. The situation facing retailers today is infinitely more complex than we are at times led to believe; the shopping experience is changing and retailers need to address how the high street can work alongside digital shopping channels like mobile, online and social, and profit as a result.
By Adam Stewart
Marketing Director
Rakuten’s Play.com
www.play.com
