Consumer Collaboration Benefits

Consumer collaboration is an interesting opportunity because it can start slow and provide baseline minimal benefits with low capital investment or it can provide significant benefits with the same low capital investment, the difference in benefits lies in the investment of personal interaction with the consumers produced from the collaborative efforts.  There is a significant difference in the benefit that is controlled or delivered based on the acceptance and embrace of the organization and the support of leadership. The support requirement though is a significant investment in commitment from retailer leadership and requires a long term commitment. The return on this investment that is completely dependent on leadership support though is significant and should encourage retailer leadership to invest the time and support that will allow the benefits to be realized.

Retailers must identify a means to encourage the personal relationship with their customers, the the past this relationship was developed and maintained by salespeople in the brick and mortar store.  Recently though the personal relationship with consumers was replaced, for many retailers, with a focus on low cost pricing to encourage consumer sales. While the lowest price practice continues it is becoming apparent that for many retailers they should redirect their focus from a low price strategy to building consumer relationships to re-engage and develop the personal relationship with consumers again.  The challenge for these retailers then is the initial investment in hardware and technology while developing the relationships with consumers.

This investment increases the cost of the operations and it also will provide a return on investment through re-engaging the personal consumer relationship.  The collaborative practices can and should be layered on top of big data strategy to track and consumer practices and provide suggestions to encourage collaborative opportunities.  This start-up phase of extended consumer collaboration will require significant investment in time from internal resources and will require significant support from leadership to ensure success.  

These activities are the next logical phase of the retail omni market in order to support the consumer relationships that have basically been eliminated through a combination of  focus on cost reductions and introduction of technology to reduce human interaction. This focus on cost reductions has been driven by the market focus on low price. This is a pervasive practice and I do not think that retailers will generally jump at the opportunity to increase operational expense to support a consumer collaborative strategy.

I see this as another opportunity for imaginative and bold retailers such as Amazon to disrupt the marketplace through the expansion of the consumer interaction and collaboration activities.  I see the future opportunities through current interactions and functionality deployed by Google in their apps, including Maps and additional apps such as surveys and especially the location based suggestions and feedback requests.  These types of activities are building the big data structures that will allow these retailers to bury their competition as a result of consumer acceptance and participation. Retailers must break with their traditional practices to wait for the industry and marketplace to develop a solution because the nature of the market no longer allows the retailer time to catch up.