Consumers have embraced mobile technology and capabilities in their shopping and purchasing practices and it is important for retailers and their suppliers to embrace these new and changing consumer practices. The mobile technology and capabilities are creating a positive disruption in the retail marketplace that will change the way that consumers, retailers and suppliers interact with each other to encourage increased collaboration in the retail experience. This positive disruption is coming in the form of wiping away the boundaries between ecommerce and brick and mortar to create a blended shopping and purchasing experience across all current market channels. Retailers must embrace this disruption in order to maintain their success in the future.
Consumers are using mobile technology to build their own shopping experience through collaboration with and across their social network and their social networking tools and technology. This is disrupting the retail marketplace by expanding the tools and capabilities into virtual shopping and purchasing practices. This is changing the relationship between consumer and retailer in a manner that is may not be comfortable to the retailer because consumers are demanding open collaboration with the retailer and knocking down the boundaries between channels. Retailers are currently viewing this as a disruption in a negative manner because it requires a dramatic shift in their practices and most importantly their market foundational framework. In order to succeed, however, retailers must view this as positive and embrace the disruption in the marketplace in order to remain successful.
The requirements for collaboration across the retail market and the extended supply chain have dramatically increased and they will continue to increase in order to meet the changing demands of the market. Retailers must change their viewpoint and their strategy to incorporate a collaborative shopping and purchasing framework that combines platform, social networks and suppliers in order to hope to meet the changing demands of consumers. Suppliers can play a significant role in this new strategy to support the retailer in meeting these new demands through inclusion in the shopping experience to both shorten the delivery timeframe and to increase the velocity of product development.
Retailers no longer have the luxury of controlling the conversation and the product development plans exclusively with their suppliers. Retailers must now include suppliers in their consumer interaction and support of shopping and purchasing because of the reductions in time-to-market and also supply to the consumer. The interaction between consumer, retailer and suppliers must be direct now in a social network framework in order to support the market and most importantly the discontinuous change driven into the market by consumer demands and technology capabilities.
And now for the audience participation portion of the show…
ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors. How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience? Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes. In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas. How can you support these continuously changing requirements?
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