Omni Channel Community Support

The omni channel value network requires a great deal of support to provide and support the community framework.  Due to the nature of technology in mobile and social networking and the acceptance of this technology by consumers the retailer must develop a community support network that includes suppliers, carriers, partner retailers and technology services.  These support services cannot be a part time occupation because the community requires the continuous support to provide the anytime, anywhere capabilities that are the base requirements of industry now.  The omni channel retailer now requires a great deal of effort to provide the seamless and robust support in the timeframes that consumers demand.  It is no longer acceptable for the retailer to interrupt features or functionality over night or worse over a multi-day period and lost features during cyber Monday could finish the business.

Just like it is important for a retailer to build the community of partners to provide the types of services, products and social networking to the consumer from the shopping home page, it is also important for the retailer to build and maintain the support capabilities across this same community.  The objective of this support community is to provide an easy to use and seamless interfaces on the shopping site to make it easy for consumers to stay on the site and shop with their friends in an open community.  The outward view of the site is a simple to use and feature rich site that encourages consumers to return and bring their friends to share.  The reality is that the more simple the outward appearance, the more complex the underlying technology to maintain the simple appearance.

This requires a large staff of technology people along with a staff of marketing and community managers across all of the network partners to maintain the appearance, features and functionality of the site.  As I have previously stated, the velocity of change in technology and consumer acceptance and demand for the technology continues to increase and this requires a focus and strong skill set of staff across the partners to meet the demands.  This will continue to challenge the entire community to support and enhance the shopping experience to meet and more importantly to anticipate the consumer demands.  

Large retailers have lost many of the younger generation consumers simply through complacency and this is now becoming a problem and limiting the success of these large retailers.  To be blunt the retailers must encourage the younger generation to shop and this requires a more robust, social and technology based virtual shopping that will encourage young consumers to return to the site to socialize with their friends.  Retailers cannot hope to attract younger customers with only low prices and sales markdowns they must now provide a social shopping experience that attracts younger consumers.

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?

Omni Channel Value Network Members

In order to produce and maintain a productive and robust consumer value network the retailer must spend a great deal of time and effort in developing and maintaining the members that will support and grow the network.  As with other social and market initiatives there is a great deal of effort required to develop and maintain this network.  The value part of this social network is derived from the range and participation of the member, along with the management of these members that must be maintained by the retailer.  The value returned for all of this effort though is the continued success of the retailer and the network partners of contributing retailers and suppliers.  This is the next logical step to the growth and development of the omni channel market and the retailers that realize and embrace this strategy will achieve a great head start.

The network members are broken down into four categories;

1. The major retailer / ‘owner’ of the network that provides the virtual social shopping home page for coordination and delivery of the shopping strategy.
2. Partner and contributing retailers that provide supporting services and products to round out the virtual shopping capabilities of the shopping home page.
3. Consumers that participate in the shopping and social networking started with the shopping home page.
4. Suppliers of the retailers that provide the products and will benefit from the consumer feedback delivered as a benefit of this value network strategy.

The consumer members must be catered to by the other participants in order for these other members to derive the full value from this network and the virtual social shopping strategy. This is the greatest challenge of the value network; to maintain the consumer interest and encourage the consumer participate in the virtual shopping strategy.

Consumers are the foundational members fo the value network because without the consumer participation the virtual social shopping home page is useless.  The key to this strategy is the social participation of consumers.  The key to participation of consumers though is an interesting and consumer friendly home page.  The challenge for the retailer and other contributing members of the network is developing and maintaining the consumer interest in this virtual home page.  This requires a significant investment in time and effort from the members of the network in order to encourage consumers to engage in the concept.

Let’s face it, the consumer block that will deliver the benefits of this strategy are also the consuemrs that are the most fickle and demanding.  This group of millenials are the future of retail though and in order to maintain future success, the large retailers must develop and grow the value network relationship with these most difficult consumers.

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?

Omni Channel Consumer Value Network

I believe that consumers are demanding a social shopping experience that will allow them to interact with their friends and family in a social networking perspective to turn the eCommerce channel into a virtual shopping mall experience.  This virtual shopping mall will be made up of retailers and service providers that compliment each other and support a virtual social shopping experience and provide the consumer with a value network of retailers, services and social networking capabilities that produce the virtual shopping mall.  This is a new space for retailers however consumers have been developing their own value network through combinations of location based product search apps, social networking tools the consumer is comfortable with and the most important tool for the consumer is the mobile technology.

The challenge for retailers is breaking through real and imagined barriers to developing the consumer value network and produce the virtual shopping mall.  Consumers will always stretch the limits of technology and utilize technology in new ways that simplify their lives.  Now the large retailers must also incorporate these new technologies to develop a consumer value network that simplifies the consumers shopping and to provide the one-stop capabilities that consumers have been putting together on their own.  Consumers will return to the retailer's’ site that provides the search tools, the social networking tools and the chain of partners that simplify the consumer’s shopping and brings value to the consumer through simplified shopping and reductions in searches.  Consumers return to Amazon not only because of the variety of products, they return because of the value network that Amazon provides to simplify shopping and the purchase.

In order to produce the consumer value network I suggest that large retailers reproduce their brick and mortar strategy for mall development in a virtual shopping home page site.  The objective here is to create a consumer value network that provides a starting place for consumers to meet and share ideas and suggestions regarding products, ways to use products and style discussions.  The consumer interest is high in this type of activity and service which you can see from the types of interest and following that Pinterest boards that focus on Ikea product hacks.  These sites and the interest in these boards provides proof of the consumer interest and the potential for the consumer value network potential.  

Development and support of this concept will not be easy, there are many hurdles to overcome.  This must be viewed as a long term strategic objective to build the network and support the interests of the consumer.  Consumers have shown their interest in these value add services by their embrace of an array of social networking tools that they are using in many imaginative ways to support their interest.  The retailer must provide the site that harnesses these tools and interest to encourage consumers to participate.  This must be taken on though as a long term strategy and provided the support and time to develop and attract consumers.

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?