Omni Market Social Interaction

The retail omni market is now driving change through social interaction across the entire extended supply chain and especially with the consumer.  The retail omni market has reached a point such that the product price, availability and delivery via any means desired by the consumer is no longer a differentiating factor because these functions have essentially become baseline functional requirements. The changing factors now are driven by the social interaction of consumers across the entire extended supply chain and with just about every partner in the extended supply chain.  This social interaction is now the key driving factor to the change impacting the retail omni market and this must be the focus of retailers and especially the large legacy retailers.

The previous few years have focused on the price, availability and delivery to support the retail omni market and retailers have been driven to provide this baseline functionality across the all interactions with th sales and delivery to the consumer.  Now, however, the consumer focus has shifted to the social interaction and relationships with retailers. This is a much more volatile area and requires more flexibility and imagination from the retailers to support. The good news is that these large legacy retailers should now be familiar with the process and speed of change as a result of the recent and the bad news is that I just don’t think these same large retailers have learned the lessons of the retail omni market to help them to support the level and velocity of change demanded by the omni market social interaction .

Consumer social interaction brings with it and even greater velocity of change than experienced with the previous round of purchase and delivery changes.  The key to supporting the level and velocity of change is the ability to sense and respond to the consumer reactions and shift priorities. There must be a fluid interaction between the consumer and the retailer that requires a focus on collaboration and engagement between consumer, retailer and other partners in the extended supply chain.  The collaboration and engagement provides the foundation for the enhanced sense mechanism to understand and react to the shifting social interaction requirements.

This enhanced collaboration and engagement requires retailers to step up their game which requires taking the culture changes to another level.  Retailers have been able to focus on the operational side of the relationship with consumers to meet the demands of pricing, availability and delivery.  Now, however, retailers can no longer delay in developing the relationship and social interaction with the consumer and this will require an increased level of collaboration and engagement with consumers and the other extended supply chain partners.  There is really no time left for retailers to embrace these demands as the velocity of changing demands increases.

Retailers cannot afford to delay in supporting the changes in the retail omni market and this requires a continuation of the cultural changes to increase social interaction with consumers and across the entire extended supply chain.  Consumers are definitely encouraging this interaction and the improvements to mobile technologies and wireless network capabilities to support these demands are definitely keeping pace and even driving the changing consumer expectations.  The challenge though is the continued cultural changes required of retailers to support these changes. Retailers cannot rest, they must continuously change and react to the consumer demands for social interaction and a relationship with the retailers and retailers must realize that their reaction to these demands will allow them to succeed in the future.

Supporting Retail Velocity of Change

The retail omni market has reached the level where what I would refer to as the ‘base’ functionality such as inventory availability, price and even to a large extent delivery options and costs practices are no longer differentiating factors and are now baseline requirements.  The challenge now for retailers it focused on the social aspects of the retail omni market such as shopping and consumer interaction to ensure the customer regularly returns to the retailer through any channel. This area of social interaction is where the challenge comes into play due to the velocity of the changes that consumers implement changes to their practices.  This is also the area where consumers are using technology easily available to allow them to implement change in their practices, thereby effectively turning the tables on retailers and wresting control of the social interaction and with it the direction of retail shopping and purchasing.

As a result of this retailers must extend the flexibility of framework and foundational technologies to support the capabilities and, most importantly, the velocity of change in these capabilities that consumers are implementing in their shopping and purchasing.  This is a major shift in the retailer practices from a closed environment that controls shopper interaction, to an open and distributed environment that supports and encourages collaboration and customer engagement with the retailer to ensure the return of the customer.  Since price and availability are no longer a differentiating factor, retailers must focus on the social interaction and collaboration with consumers is probably the greatest factor in this social interaction. This is really no surprise to retailers and in fact the leaders in retail have been moving in this direction for quite some time.

The leaders in this retail change in practices such as Amazon have been focused on the social interaction and collaboration aspect of the consumer experience for quite some time.  Online retailers especially have had to focus on the technology social aspect of retail because of the simple fact that without a brick and mortar presence these online retailers have not had the luxury of human interaction with the consumer.  On the other hand, retailers with the brick and mortar presence have overlooked the technology social aspect of retail because of their long standing human interaction. These retailers have focused on the operational side of the retail equation though and now must play catch up with the technology social aspect.  

The key requirement for this social interaction, consumer collaboration and engagement is speed of delivery to support the velocity of change.  The velocity of change in consumer social interaction requires a heightened awareness to sense the change and even to guide the change in the social interaction and collaboration.  This ability to sense the change requires the retailer to improve their collaborative practices across the entire extended supply chain and especially the communication links with consumers.  This is the next frontier where the legacy retailers must focus to play ‘catch up’ with major online retailers such as Amazon. These legacy retailers must focus on the velocity of changing dimensions and explosion of interaction with the consumer across the entire retail omni market environment.  It can be very intimidating to the legacy retailers when behemoths such as Wal Mart are forced to play catch up. It also speaks to the types and scope of change that has pushed Wal Mart into this corner.

Retail Speed of Delivery

Consumers in the retail omni market now are focused on changing lifestyles and how the retail marketplace can meet the demands of their changing demands to meet their lifestyles.  It’s not necessarily that the consumer lifestyle is changing so dramatically or even so quickly, consumers are refining and changing how they meet their lifestyle demands. The focus on in the retail omni market requires a focus on speed of delivery in order to the changing consumer demands.  This means that speed of delivery in the retail market must be a focus of retailers in order to maintain their place in consumer shopping and purchasing. This retail omni market provides a level of choice to consumers that has not been available to consumers in the past and now consumers are really focused on taking advantage of these choices.

This is interesting because consumers have come to a place in their shopping and purchasing practices that focuses on shopping and purchasing capabilities that meet their lifestyle rather than focus on product availability.  Consumers and their interaction with the retail market has reached the point where the product and price priorities have leveled and the differentiating factor now is the ease of shopping and purchasing. Consumers have reached the point where price and availability are expected to be comparable across the marketplace and they now focus on the selection and delivery to meet the consumer needs and demands.  

This change in consumer focus is bringing a new level of change for retailers that is the focus now and driving the disruption in the marketplace.  Unfortunately for retailers, consumers are using the technology available to focus on their priorities which is bringing this new level of disruption to the market.  Retailers must realize that the cycle of change is going to remain and only the focus of the change will shift. Consumers are a fickle bunch and they have embraced the new fact of the retail marketplace that the technology available encourages consumers to put things together in new ways to support changing needs and demands.  

Retail sales outside of the necessities of food and medicine are based on relationships and opportunities and consumers are now in the position to put technology capabilities togethers in ways that can dramatically increase the opportunities, both timing and types of opportunities. This means that retailers must increase their level of flexibility with process process and functionality to meet the changing consumer demands in addition to increasing the level of consumer engagement and collaboration in order to build the relationships that allow retailers to identify the changing demands.  

Retail functionality has reached a point where flexibility is the focus and the framework that many of the larger retailers have implemented to support the flexibility has also reached a point where is can swiftly react to market demands.  The requirement now for retailers is the identification and reaction time to the shopping and purchasing demands. You can see that the recent focus has been on shopping and purchasing capabilities and that price and availability is now the price of admission.  Rather than focusing on the capability retailers must now focus on how they identify the changing demands because this ‘how’ will allow these retailers to identify and react to the future market disruptions.