Changes Driving Omni Market Network

The collaborative network and especially the extended partner participation in this network is driving changes to the omni market network that require retailers to reevaluate their place in the collaborative network.  This change is related to their importance and influence of the collaborative network in the omni market. One of the greatest influences on collaborative network and the omni market is the growth in importance and influence of the extended partners within this network.  The reality is that retailers’ influence and control of the omni market network is reducing as the increase of influence and importance of the extended partners in the collaborative network. This is based on the ability of these extended partners to support the demands of the retailers with the same services and the retailers’ needs for these services.

These changes in the collaborative network are creating a social network framework where there is really no single controlling partner and instead a collaborative connectivity that depends on the partnership and the technical connection. This social connectivity allow the partners to provide services and products across the network quickly and efficiently, allowing the partners share services and products base on demands of the network.  This is a rather large change for retailers and will require a great deal of change in process to support and most importantly will require a change in culture to embrace the concept of types of pass through services and products.

Many retailers have already embraced a similar concept in their retail store outlets where you see partnerships that offer goods and services to the store shoppers.  These added goods and services are focused on retaining customers in the store and provide benefits to both the retailer and their store partners. I am discussing a similar type of arrangement where the partner goods and services encourage the consumer to utilize them through the omi market.  The goods and services in this example are supporting the retail marketplace where the example of partners in retail store outlets are generally focused on retaining customers in the retail outlet and are separate from the retailer goods and services. In other words the retail store model leases space to the partners that might benefit from the location and the omni market model integrates these partners into the retail process in support of the retailer.  

These changes are much more that simply advertising placements on the web site, these changes are at the foundation framework for the support of the omni market.  This in turn is driving change into the retail omni market that will ultimately change the retail culture again. I think that the better term at this point though is these changes are driving a retail transformation that is being led by consumer embrace of social network practices and technology capabilities.  This next step in the continued retail transformation is the retailer culture change from command and control to shared collaborative execution. This is difficult to many retailers because of the feeling of loss of control and these changes are necessary as we move into the next phase of the retail transformation.