Trust And Openness In Retail Market

Success in social networks depends on trust and openness and the retail collaborative marketplace is no different and in fact trust and openness is even more important now in the collaborative marketplace.  There are just too many partners and participants in the collaborative marketplace for untrustworthy partners and with the speed of actions and reaction these less than trustworthy partners are quickly identified and can be either reformed or eliminated.  The power and the speed to delivery are enabled by an open and trusting relationship to act in a way that will produce the most benefit for the network. Consumers react quickly to walk away from partners that stretch these limits, I’m not saying these types of retailers or participants in the retail marketplace will not survive, I am saying though that these types will quickly gain a reputation and will struggle with the reputation rather than fluidly participate in the collaborative network.

The collaborative network works best with partners that are focused on mutually beneficial benefits across the network for all partners.  This means a change from the competitive response to a more open and collaborative response,especially as it relates to the partners in the network.  The collaborative network partners represent the parties that extend services of each of the partners to strengthen the offerings and most importantly the relationships with partners across the network, including consumers.  This is a change in attitude for the large legacy retailers, especially as it relates to consumers. This is not a change though for the small retailers, the niche specialty service and customization providers and the the supply chain and all of these are partners that must be included in the collaborative network in order to be successful.

These open partners within the collaborative network can help the other partners, especially the large retailers to be more open and trusting, or collaborative, in their relationships across the network.  These large retailers though must be receptive to the suggestions and give up the controlling practice to become more collaborative. The whole point, or business objective of this collaborative network is to provide a means where the partners can support each other to meet market demands in a mutually beneficial manner.  What we have learned over the recent years from outsourcing is that the most successful model provides a mutually beneficial relationship that allows the partners to support the market demands. Large retailers cannot meet these demands alone and in order to succeed require the collaborative network and in order for this collaborative network to success all of the partners must have a high level of trust and openness within the partner framework.   

This, I believe, is the secret to the success of retailers in this next phase in the retail marketplace transformation and this collaborative network will allow the retailers to better sense and respond to the marketplace demands.  The retail market is all about sensing changes and reacting to these changes early enough to benefit from the change. Change in the market is increasing in velocity and we have reached the point where no single entity can hope to respond to all demands.  Therefore is is critical to embrace a collaborative network based on openness and trust in order to respond.