E & M - commerce, friend or foe for retail shops?

Does evolution create revolution in retail?

The online shops pop up on the WWW. Shopping is omnipresent. E-commerce is a fact and serious source of income for entrepreneurs. M-commerce arises. Digital Point of Sale and NFC (Near Field Communication) will be common good in Smart Phones. Cash can disappear. If the data networks appear stable a full shift from physical to virtual retail stores might be reality; or not?

The success factors of e-commerce: convenience, speed and price. The success factors of physical stores are hitting the senses, the physical seduction of and by DNA. In the past quality on products was limited to the personal and trust. Nowadays quality is more grown to a hygiene factor. Both the store and the Internet provide quality as a standard.

Friend or foe

The rules of retail are changing. The consumer has technology and information. Albert Heijn, a Dutch supermarket organization, did start with personal serving in 1936. Soon shifted its concept to self-service supermarkets. At that time a revolution in Holland. Today on internet ordered groceries are delivered at home in the cities. Last week I downloaded the “Appie” App on my iPhone. This App provides recipes and once in the AH supermarket it stores my articles and guides me in the specific shop location based on my meal today.  The Appie App is a perfect example to bridge a physical store and our digital technological world.

The friend or foe status between the virtual and physical world is an outdated idea to my opinion.

TOO long video for a fast reading blog of course -sorry!- with 06:00 but at least look 0:00 - 0:39 and till from 3:21 where transforming in shopping is shown.

Everyone is a consumer. So if the consumer has grown smarter, this automatically means that the retailer also evolved smarter. And that retailer has to be more trend watcher as ever before! The retailer itself participates in social media, social commerce and discovers it.

The retailer combines his own strength, personality, social skills and knowledge along with the technological instruments. A good example for me is the excellent restaurant. A restaurant should really be visited because digital foraging is not tasty on the tongue. The chef his art, and hostmanship are human competences. This excellent restaurant performs its strength basically full physical and DNA. Though is it possible for the chef and hostess to hide and deny the technology? No!

The technologies include social recommendations (recommendations by customers for potential customers), LBS (local-based services like Facebook Places and Foursquare) ideas, articles containing interesting ways to facilitate the much needed to attract customers!

People, so customers: read what others read, do what others do and believe what other people write. This is the base of social commerce.

An inside look at the store IRL + virtual

And what about the development http://www.googleartproject.com!  Starting at a museum environment  to the retailerstore is a "small step for a ICT specialist but an big step for Mankind". And  at this moment let’s not discuss about Facebooks’ possible feature. With this technique Facebook members can take a sightseeing at  their friends’ home. J. Back to retailing.  Driving up in Google Street View and then come indoors with this technique. Opened with a full virtual environment, the retailer shows his products and store display in 360 degrees perspective. In advance at home or on your way on the SmartPhone or tablet. Here the term trans-media is best suited, even better as cross-media. Crossmedia sends the message via several media. With transmedia the message is "build" through several media (platforms) and so is complementary.  The participation and cooperation between supplier and customers can be activated. Like Gianluigi Cuccereddu SMP gave his comment on this blog via LinkedIn; "So companies have to search for transmedial execution at all of available channels, so physical and online through every possible device (laptop, smartphone, tablets, connected tvs, game console, etc)". So obvious he mentions the "friend status"of all the channels. 

Knowledge and information or just in the virtual store?

The image of personal attention and advice primarily goes along with a physical store. The Internet is used for fast sales of non-complex products and services. Primarily this is a cost driven factor for the retailer. Qualified knowledge focussed personnel is quite expensive. Moreover, it takes extensive time to advise customers in the store. This results in waiting time for other customers = irritation factor. I suggest a retailer to think about possible migration in providing the customer more information prior to grant. If the retailer can provide substantive knowledge about its service and product already via his website, he can focus on the relationship and  service in the customers presence. Note that I don’t mean to full shift, but to search for shift as long the customer needs and relationshipfocus can be optimized. Contact focus on the customer and the relationship instead on the product.  So imagine the http://www.kijkshop.nl/  added with focus on customer relationship and customer situation needs.

A company @ Rotterdam - Holland

Today I have had a good brainstorm session with two owners of a rental agency in Rotterdam. I have determined that the company combines personality, market knowledge and the social DNA factor with technological developments. The apartments they rent can be found through Google Maps and Street View. The company informs their potential customers for new available rental housing by e-mail and Twitter. On Facebook, I became one of their 191 friends. Imagine if in this company even some elements of Zappos, Amazon.com and a top restaurant can be added! We agreed I will assist their company to create the optimum! And I am excited to start cooperating soon with these really great guys :-) Reaction speed, aligned processes and a fully drive motivated team are drivers with which we will achieve this status; mark my words. Again the combination of people and technology.

Technology is not needed when craftsmanship is available (?), read on:

Then there are the retailers that consider technological innovations as a hype, time-consuming and too fast for them to follow. They say the proof is there for success without all these smartphones, laptops and tablets. Because the last centuries they have made profit out of their business. Well, hopefully these retailers have not lost too much in savings during  the economic crisis, because they will need their old money to survive life and their company!

This movie of the collaborating monkeys as a metaphor for "physical meets virtual" instead of the ‘versus- status’. The not always willing and interested monkey, represents the physical shop retailer which has to grow into collaboration with the virtual innovation monkey. But at last the cooperation is rewarded by a bunch of fruit (customers) :-)