Consumer Experience - The Hot Stove
Consumer experience is the sum total of all interactions a customer has ever had with your brand: tangible, visual, emotional, read, blogged, consumed, experienced.
Part 1: Omni Channel
Not so long ago our way of shopping was primarily taking place in the brick & mortar environment, only a few companies made products or services available through mail order. This has rapidly changed in the past 10 years with internet, e-commerce and mobile technology. Today’s mission for businesses to fulfill consumer demands has been defined by the trend word “Omni Channel Distribution”. What does it mean though?
One could describe it simply as: customers get what they want, when they want it. Obtaining the best price is not necessarily the main objective and as much as time is of essence today, a consistent and seamless shopping experience online, mobile and in-store will be the deciding factor for consumer satisfaction.
Physical stores will still offer the advantage to touch, feel and try products as much as provide a social environment to interact with staff and other customers. However, more and more the retail location transforms from a storing and selling merchandise space to a digitally integrated, audio/visual and interactive environment. 3-D reality fitting as seen at Topshop, where clothes can be tried on without going into changing rooms, virtual inventory and photos to share instantly with friends, or radio frequency identification (RFID) designed to engage and inform about products are just at the beginning.
The challenge for enterprises will be to overcome conflicting organizational difficulties between distribution channels (wholesale, e-commerce, retail) so that they work for each other. On the other hand, brick & mortar spaces present the opportunity to create mini-distribution centres for online fulfillment (see GAP, Best Buy, etc.) and at the same time using extra staff capacity.
So, next time you go through your business planning process, consider the most important questions:
Is this product/service needed, wanted and scalable?
Who is going to execute and what does the team look like?
How do I make money or what are my distribution channels?
Stay tuned for Part 2…
Written by, Manfred Vollmer