Building the Collaborative Marketplace

The retail collaborative marketplace is truly a combination and extension or the collaborative supply chain for the retail market and this collaborative marketplace adds to, or extends the omni market through the goods and services offered through the collaborative retail market network.  The collaborative market is truly a network of providers of goods and services that enhance the offerings of the retailer and provides a means establishing robust social commerce network for consumers to engage. This collaborative network is build in the same manner as your personal social network through connections and relationships through connections that relate and provide related or specialized goods and services to the collaborative network.  This network requires a shared and collaborative framework to encourage participation and requires a shared management and coordination rather than a command and control management of services.

The key differences between the omni market and the collaborative market is the shared management and coordination that requires a change in culture and the resulting requirement for a robust and flexible technology platform that allows and encourages the growth of the social network aspect of the collaborative network.  This requires first building and supporting a culture that is open and collaborative that encourages the open interaction between partners and consumers to provide a virtual shopping mall of goods and services. This requires the ‘entrance’ to this virtual shopping mall to be through any retailer or search engine or ad content.  This is a dramatic change that will push the large retailers outside of their comfort zone of command and control that has been used to control their marketplace offering. These practice has hindered the relationship with consumers through the omni market and has hindered the goods and services that encourages the return of the consumer.  All other changes and functionality is merely technical details that can be delivered, however none of the technology will make a difference without the culture change to overcome the current practice of command and control, or internal focus, to become more externally focused and collaborative.

The technology capabilities regarding connectivity and collaboration are important to the long term viability and success of the retailers in the collaborative marketplace and the good news is that these tools and capabilities have been proven out in other areas and business functions.  The supply chain has been especially successful in developing these technologies and tools to support a far flung network of partners and services and the retail market can embrace and integrate the tools and concepts to support the collaborative marketplace objectives. The large legacy retailers have shown their ability to support implementation of tools and technologies as they are identified based on the omni market operational requirements.  The challenge that I see is the need to not just support and implement collaborative technologies and tools, but these retailers must embrace and join the collaborative community.

I embracing the collaborative community as a key factor in the future success of the large retailers and this is a critical juncture for these large retailers.  I believe that we are seeing the initial stages of this collaborative marketplace from Amazon in their offerings and promotion of goods and services from small partners and specialty retailers.  Amazon has built a network of partners as an integral part of their platform from the beginning and they have encouraged participation from consumers along with small businesses to take advantage of this platform.  In addition, Amazon has also spent a great deal of money and time in developign a cloud platform that can support a wide array of services. These activities are all coming togehther now in a platform and services that is creating a collaborative marketplace that allows the partners within the marketplace to take advantage of these services and capabilities to grow both their own sales along with related sales and income to Amazon from providing the platform.  The large retailers have been two steps behind and this is no longer an option they must embrace this collaborative marketplace culture and technology to succeed in the future.