Friday, April 21, 2017

The future of brick and mortar retail

With eCommerce getting more and more easy to implement, are brick and mortar stores going to die?

I think not. As long as brick and mortar and adopt and see eCommerce as completing their physical store or vice versa, I believe stores will continue to exist and adapt for the future.

There are ways physical retailers can use digital marketing tools to build their business.
1. Track their foot traffic - There are tools out there that can give them anonymized access to to mobile data of consumers passing through your store. This is similar to how you can track traffic to an online store and provide similar insight into your consumer.
2. Update pricing - Amazon makes millions of price changes per day. With brick and mortar having access to similar kind of real-time supply-demand data, they can manage their pricing more effectively as well.
3. Improve user experience - Again, these days we hear about user experience in terms of a web site. However, similar process can be used to track user experience in a physical store as well. Based on feedback received either directly from a shopper or by looking at their shopping pattern, improvements can be made to the store layout.
4. Improve customer service - Having an app in store that can be used to complement their shopping, the store can guide customers to a salesperson, let them know about promotions, and make the checkout more efficient. I have seen such tools used at Stop n Shop. The article talks about Neiman Marcus using a mobile app in similar fashion.

Here is the link to get more details around this:
http://www.cio.com/article/3190958/marketing/digital-marketing-and-data-tools-prove-valuable-for-brick-and-mortar-too.html

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