Peer Reviewed

From Gensler. In this video presentation, co-leaders of Gensler’s top-ranked retail design practice, Barry Bourbon and Irwin Miller share case studies of retailers that have exported their brands to new markets, along with lessons learned from the global partnerships that paved the way.

From Platt Retail Institute. Technology touches almost every aspect of commercial activity. And with the rapid pace of technological innovation, its impact on business enterprise will only increase in the future. Like many other industries retailers are being impacted by technology advancements, as well as changing shopping habits.

From HCL Technologies. Achieving Supply Change Visibility excellence has become a major concern for supply chain leaders. To address the above-mentioned challenges organizations need a dynamic and robust SCV framework that can enable quick response to change as well as improve and strengthen the organizational supply chain by making data readily available to all stakeholders, including the customer.

From RIS News/Cognizant. This 2012 Shopper Experience study offers new insights into customers and how retailers can reshape their strategies to provide personalized in-store experiences that will keep shoppers coming back.

From McGladrey LLP. By all indications, 2012 will be another year of lethargic growth, store closings and increased focus on everyday low prices by several major retailers, all which will have a significant impact on the entire retail landscape. Multichannel is key to survival for many.

From 5th Finger. In this whitepaper we help retailers navigate their way to a solid mobile strategy by discussing the latest in consumer behavior, mobile retail trends and opportunities.

From the Platt Retail Institute. The Transformational Impact of eCommerce on Retail Stores. It is time for retailers to transform the store shopping experience to include Web access. This article addresses the questions: Why is eCommerce outpacing in-store retailing in sales growth and customer experience satisfaction? And, how should stores be reconfigured to leverage the advantages of eCommerce?

From IBM. Today’s consumers seek and accept shopping advice from peers, family, friends and even strangers. They bring attitudes and expectations, shaped by experiences across a broad spectrum of industries, to every interaction with retailers. And through this lens of connectivity and collaboration – which enables them to know almost everything about every product and brand – these “smarter,” empowered consumers ultimately decide which retailers have earned their trust.

From The Platt Retail Institute. The “70 Percent Rule” has been consistently advanced by those seeking to profit from the sale of all manner of in-store marketing devices – from POP displays to digital signage – as justification for these expenditures. Viewed another way, these expenditures are assumed to be effective because the marketing tools are located in-store. The implication is that in-store marketing activities are the most important factor impacting in-store purchase decisions.

From Platt Retail Institute. The digital signage industry continues to grow, despite a challenging economic climate. Industry verticals such as financial institutions, out-of-home, and higher education are increasing their use of digital signs. Yet retail adoption of digital signs continues to lag. There are many reasons for this. Cost is a major impediment of course. But beyond the financial considerations, there are more fundamental issues that continue to challenge retailers. Those to be considered in this article include a lack of understanding of how to leverage technology to enhance content relevancy and impact, and how to integrate digital signs with other emerging in-store technologies.

From Grant Thornton. Multichannel retail — the merging of traditional brick-and-mortar retailing with online and mobile retail channels — involves far more than allowing customers to purchase items through a website. Multichannel retailing presents ample, seemingly boundless opportunities for brand engagement and interaction with customers across new platforms. Yet inevitably, these new technologies, platforms and sales channels come with new risks and challenges for companies to manage.

From RSM McGladrey. Slower-than-historic post-recessionary growth and the persistent high levels of unemployment are key issues facing businesses today. More importantly, employment growth and rising income represent opportunities to drive market share and higher sales. The consumer is responding differently than in past cycles, placing more emphasis on value – from the purchase of more private brands when it comes to basic/commodity merchandise, to cross-shopping among distribution channels. Typical of most cycles, discretionary spending is beginning to gain momentum, outpacing overall retail sales. Consumers, aided by the Internet, are smarter and more demanding shoppers. Winners among retailers and vendors will be those that understand their consumers – what they want, when they want it and at what price they are willing to pay. Those that build and act on that understanding will be the companies that prosper in the new era of growth that is now developing.

From Grant Thornton LLP. With the holiday season behind us, gift card sales continued to surge. Not only did more people purchase gift cards this holiday season, but the average amount spent on each card increased as well. While consumers flock to gift cards for their flexibility, businesses have embraced them as a means to increase sales, improve cash flow and manage inventory. But with the growth in use of gift cards also comes an uptick in scrutiny and regulations, especially within the past year. Grant Thornton LLP’s new white paper, Gift cards: Opportunities and issues for retailers, explores the areas of risk and opportunity gift cards can bring to retailers and outlines how new rules from the IRS and the Federal Reserve Board provide retailers and gift card issuers much-needed guidance.

From Deloitte. This report examines how these trends will most likely shape consumer spending patterns and the world of consumers more broadly. What will consumers in different geographic and demographic segments value? What will they need and want? Given what they have faced in recent years, how will their attitudes and behaviors continue to change in the coming decade? To set the stage for this discussion, the report begins with a broad look at how changes in the global economy are likely to affect consumer spending as we slowly emerge from recession. In so far as one can ever predict the future, it then looks at longer-term economic, demographic, and technological trends and some of the resulting changes in consumer attitudes and behaviors that are likely to take place over the next 10 years.

From VeraCentra. How relevant are your marketing communications? Studies reveal that up to 63 percent of consumers have or will consider abandoning a brand all together because of irrelevant communications. Executed well, relevancy can prevent customer defection, improve customer satisfaction and increase customer spending while reducing marketing costs. Growing Customer Relationships with Increased Relevancy describes: • What marketers risk if today's relevancy requirements are ignored • How to use Business Intelligence to achieve deep customer understanding • Which technologies facilitate relevant customer communications • Quantifiable improvement in customer metrics and campaign response rates

From Grant Thornton LLP. The goal of this white paper is to help convenience store companies identify trends affecting the industry. The white paper touches on both big-picture trends, such as merger and acquisition activities, as well as trends in technical areas that may get overlooked as executives grapple with strategic issues. In addition, the white paper identifies four emerging issues that convenience store management need to keep on top of: shifting consumer preferences; volatile gas prices; employee engagement; and mergers and acquisitions. It also has lists of ideas for management personnel to consider as they evaluate what’s right for their organization.

From Continuum. Retail promotional signage is more complicated today. It requires collaboration that includes your vendors, merchants, marketing specialists, pricing staff, advertising coordinators, translators, operations and store environment. You have to organize and communicate. What worked in the ‘90s will not work today. You have to achieve customer impact, centralized branding, management of your total promotional signage “real estate”, time-to-market, pricing accuracy, reduced administrative burden, localization and assortment clustering for demographics and regulatory environment, bullet-proof in-store execution and helpdesk support for marketers and stores.

From Retail Systems Research. For retailers, the “moment of truth” comes at that exact second in time when the customer gives the clerk money in exchange for merchandise. But retail payment systems are undergoing a quiet revolution. Alternative forms of payment are emerging, offering new flexibility to consumers both inside the store and in new shopping channels, and causing a gradual shift from traditional forms of payment. While some look to consumer acceptance of new payment methods as the bar to measure the potential of such innovations, RSR wanted to uncover the motivations of retailers who ultimately must decide to make these new methods available to customers.

From Precima. Factors like growing competition, the explosion of brand choice, and an overload of market noise have all led to the increasing power of the consumer and the decreasing effectiveness of traditional retail strategies. In the face of this new market reality, we see retailers and manufacturers increasingly adopt a consumer-centric strategy as the new basis for competition. Precima provides ten tips to retailers and manufacturers for adopting a comprehensive consumer centric approach to business, drawing on the data and findings from research that Precima and DemandTec commissioned from IDC Global Retail Insights, titled "Being Consumer-Centric: A Retailer and Manufacturer Update."

From ARS Interactive. The content dilemma is a published study of online website users impressions and opinions of product page content presented on online retail websites. The paper contains insights and opinions gleaned from online shoppers to indicate what is important regarding product page information and how online product information is presented across online shopping websites.

From Grant Thornton LLP. Retailers throughout the country and across nearly all sectors experienced their biggest declines in decades at the end of 2008, and continue to suffer declining sales in 2009. The economic downturn has hit the retail sector hard. But with the challenges, there also are distinct opportunities. This white paper highlights five key trends transforming the retail sector and offers tips for capitalizing on these areas of growth: buyers are choosing clicks over bricks, private-labels are gaining ground over name brands, going green is bringing in the green, a loyal customer is your best customer, and improving processes lowers costs and boost customer satisfaction

Given the realities of a global economic recession that has thrust companies into a vortex of plunging consumer demand, the rise of consumer control fueled by the ever-growing popularity of social media, and the decline of brand loyalty owing to a competitive marketplace awash with consumer choices, companies are under more pressure than ever to improve customer satisfaction and retention. At least part of the solution lies in the power of capturing, integrating, enhancing, analyzing and acting upon customer feedback. This is evidenced by a plethora of success stories that show a strong correlation between an increased focus on customer feedback as a strategic imperative and positive business outcomes. Aberdeen research findings further speak to the year-over-year improvements across several key performance indicators that companies have realized as a result of putting the right technologies, organizational resources, business processes, and performance metrics in place to achieve success with respect to their customer feedback initiatives.

Retailers constantly strive to attract new customers and retain loyal customers, at the same time competing against a myriad of other retailers who are also trying to gain and maintain many of these same customers. So how does a retailer meet the customers’ xpectations and gain a competitive advantage?

It’s an easy guess that retailers today spend a great deal more time thinking about comp store sales and store budgets than about innovation. Given retail’s pressures, it sometimes seems in fact that any concern beyond this coming Saturday is in the realm of long-range planning. Why should a conscious and planned-out drive for innovation merit center stage?

The $22 billion (US) global market research and polling industry is undergoing rapid change in response to the emergence of the Internet as a tool for the collection of information on the tastes, preferences and behaviors of consumers and citizens. Part of this change involves a revolutionary shift in a fundamental element of market research: increasingly “sample size” is no longer the sole determinant of survey costs, and new software holds the promise of allowing an unprecedented level of direct client engagement in ongoing research.

By the art of customer experience, we mean all the many strategies and techniques retailers use to engage and delight customers and inspire their behavior. This can take many forms: décor that resonates with customers’ lifestyles or aspirations; lifestyle displays that help customers understand how to integrate particular merchandise into their lives; impeccable housekeeping that demonstrates retailers’ attention to every detail that impacts the customer; pleasing scents and sounds (since the art of customer experience is multi-sensory); the ability for the customer to personalize selections, which intensifies their emotional connection to you; special services to respond to special customers’ every whim; and more.

As customers become more sophisticated, expecting more benefits and incentives to remain loyal, customer service continues to be the top priority for specialty retailers. To satisfy customer service requirements, retailers are trying to differentiate their offerings while maintaining the focus on the overall return on investment (ROI).

One key aspect of Customer Centricity is understanding and anticipating the needs of your customers and prospects. Retail execution that synchs well with customer needs, desires and goals (whether articulated or not!) will result in improved customer satisfaction, increased customer retention and higher sales (and margins).

In today's world, successful loyalty strategies must assume a more comprehensive role in the overall marketing plan—one that seeks to identify and leverage the current relationships between a company and its customers, then extends that equity to achieve a competitive advantage based upon that relationship.