Social Commerce Retention

 

One of the greatest benefits to social commerce tools, practices and procedures is the added capabilities to engage and therefore retain customers.  With the downward spiral of traditional retail stores and malls the retention of customers has been one of the losses to the large legacy retailers.  For the longest time malls provided a vehicle to engage customers and retain their focus and purchasing practices to their brand.  Now though one of the results of the social network evolution is the death death of the mall for social interaction.  The mall in the suburbs then turns into a ghost town that is only inhabited by teens with no outlet or easy means to gather and the biggest problem with this demographic is the limited purchasing interest in anything other than fast food and entertainment.  

Real estate developers are forced to find new methods for these large malls to survive and many are turning into entertainment and restaurant centers to survive.  I have no idea where this will end because the experimentation with potential changes continues now in a shifting environment of demands and interest.  These results are also being shaped now by a resurgence in multi-purpose living arrangements in cities where large areas of old warehouse and factory tracts are turned into lofts and apartments for living with a shopping included in the development for entertainment and groceries.  These developments are expanding and shifting in purpose and interest while the large shopping malls and especially the anchor stores in these malls re-think and remake the mall through either redevelopment or abandoning for new purposes.

This is where social commerce comes into the picture with a means for consumers to group in social shopping networks with their friends and family.  One key outcome of these results is dramatically enhanced retention of consumers.  One of the key retention tools for eCommerce retailers such as Amazon is their reach across geographic areas and the depth of their product offering.  This is a compelling tool for customers and families that are spread across geographic areas because they can shop together electronically and then purchase and delivery to any address.  This single capability in my opinion is the single greatest reason for the increase in social shopping and purchasing.

The second greatest reason for the increase in social commerce shopping end the inherent retention of customers is the changing lifestyles of people and the dramatic reduction of time during normal business hours for shopping and purchasing.  Social commerce keeps calling people back because they can shop at any time from the comfort of their home and not worry about coordinating time for these purchases, this is  a very compelling reason to change shopping and purchasing practices.

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?

Social Commerce Efficiencies

 

Consumers gain a great deal of efficiencies resulting from the social commerce shopping and purchasing and as a result of these shopping and purchasing efficiencies they also gain a great deal of time back for their schedule to enhance their lifestyle and family requirements.  Retailers and suppliers can also gain a great deal of efficiencies from the social commerce shopping and purchasing practices as long as they focus on their methods, processes and procedures to standardize across channels and every interaction with the customer.  This, however, is also the greatest challenge for the retailer because it requires a change in culture along with an overhaul of their shopping and purchasing support practices.  These are deep seated and ingrained practices for the retailer and will require focus and stamina to change.  

Consumers have adapted to and embraced a continuous process to improve efficiencies across all of their lifestyle and interactions and I think this practice has become so common and ingrained in the daily interactions of consumers that they perform these analyses and improvements without a thought.  The consumer is constantly interacting with family, friends, other consumers, service providers and other retailers of all shapes and sizes and these interactions and even sequence and priority of these interactions is changing continuously to provide suggestions and demonstrations of improved efficiencies.  The consumers are then open to trying new methods based on recommendations or opportunity in their daily interactions.  This is a very robust and efficient method for continuous improvements and continuous efficiencies.

Retailers and especially large legacy retailers are must more rigid in their methods, processes and procedures as a result of years of focus on the command and control culture along with a focus on cost controls.  I say specifically cost controls and not efficiencies because the retailer has been focused on reducing costs in their channels rather than improving the efficiency of the product flow through their channels.  Inventory is a great example of this because retailers are mainly focused on procuring the lowest cost, highest quality for that cost, and distributing this product to the various channels for purchase by the consumers.  This supports the store and mall channels for retailers to generate sales through these channels although the inventory management is not very efficient and can generate a great deal of overstock inventory that require price reductions to move the product.  This produces inefficiencies in inventory management and replenishment in the retail stores along with impacts to profitability.

The challenge for retailers to improve methods, process and procedures improvements has been greatly highlighted as a result of the changing consumer shopping habits and the reduction in traffic in malls.  Retailers must catch up to consumer efficiency demands and methods in order to stop the slide. This is something that retailers must address internally through culture changes and improved processes that focus on shopping and purchasing and not the channel in which these activities are performed.

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?

Aging Equipment In Supply Chain

 

All infrastructure equipment ages and the equipment utilized within the supply chain is not immune from this aging.  With the speed of change and the impact of the changed technology this can be a big deal in the supply chain as it relates to improved capabilities and improved stability in the supply chain.  The network and communication technologies supporting the network and wireless capabilities within the office and the warehouse is one small example of the infrastructure that can benefit greatly from improvements.  The speed and bandwidth improvements are dramatic from just a couple of years ago as it relates to the network technology and these may justify by themselves the upgrade in equipment.  On the other hand, the workstation technology has really not seen such dramatic improvements outside of the 64 bit technology upgrade.  

All equipment is purchased generally based on a three year cycle of replacement, however in my experience that three year cycle in many cases is extended until the point when the failure rate reaches an unacceptable level.  I do that myself with my major purchases such as a car where I keep the car for a minimum of 10 years, until the rate and cost of repairs reaches an unacceptable level.  In both examples you lose out on improvements in technology that reduce the overall cost of ownership and also increase the functionality and capabilities resulting from the new replacement equipment.  The interesting thing though is that each piece of equipment has its own specific reasons for failure and also for improvements resulting from replacement.  

Quite a while ago PC’s went through a period of dramatic and swift improvements and during that time it made some sense to replace the PC on a shorter time cycle and that is when the three year cycle was added as a baseline for IT equipment replacement.  Now the winds have shifted and PC’s are no longer providing dramatic improvements in usability in the same short period of time.  This has shifted now to network technology and equipment where performance and capabilities improvements are delivered on a quickening cycle.  

Another area of improvements in capabilities, performance and cost is in mobile technology that is resulting from the explosion in consumer mobile technology.  These changes are coming in the form of replacing mobile scanning devices with smaller smartphone and tablet technologies.  A great deal of this is the result of businesses recognizing the benefits of technology that is at once very familiar and accepted by the workforce along with the reality that the cost of this mobile technology is dramatically improved.  While the smartphone and tablet may not be the most rugged equipment in a warehouse setting, it can be ruggedized through cases and due to the cost of the equipment can be replaced at a fraction of the cost of the legacy scanning technology.   

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?