Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
TheSocialCMO 
Since the advent of the consumer internet in the mid-1990s we’ve heard and seen the word e-commerce some several billion times as it has blended into the smoothie that is today’s societal lexicon.
Funnily enough, it’s only now that the last laggards are finally beginning to spin up e-commerce sites as they realize they’re slowly sinking deeper into their single channel swamp.
Every day, we change. We move (slowly) toward the person we’ll end up being.
Not just us, but our organizations. Our political systems. Our culture.
Are you more generous than the you of five or ten years ago? More confident? More willing to explore?
Have you become more brittle? Selfish? Afraid?
Grumpy and bitter isn’t a place we begin. It’s a place we end up.
Do we intentionally choose the optimistic path? Are we eagerly more open to change and possibility?
Every day we make the hard decisions that build a culture, an organization, a life.
So… what does the future of retail look like and what might an airport have to do with this?
Well first off, Omni-Channel’s a great buzzword, but how best to define the term and how can retailers (and even airport authorities) get from where they are today to the promised land?
This week’s share ‘Videos and Visions: Of Omni-Channel and Airports’ seeks to shed more light on both the definition and growing manifestation of future state omni-channel retailing.
To get started you should check out part of Jim Tompkins video ‘The Titans’ specifically focusing on his third game changing strategy ‘Omni-Channel Retail’
The entire video is 34 minutes long (well worth a look) but for today’s purpose have only selected the last 15 minutes in which Jim puts forward one of the most condensed, compelling and complete definitions of omni-channel retail I’ve seen to date!
Sure hope you enjoyed Jim Tompkins expanded views on omni-channel retail and how mastering same will truly be a game changing strategy for those retailers who successfully cross the chasm.
Evolution to omni-channel retail is all about transforming the customer journey and what better place to begin talking about journeys than the airport!
Omni-channel evolution is all about taking the ordinary, re-imagining what could be and then recreating the traditional customer experience into the extraordinary.
This is what has been done at the Frankfurt Airport through their omni-channel e-commerce transformation as highlighted in this video!
How are 160,000 daily travellers contributing to making the Frankfurt Airport the largest shopping mall in Germany?
The answer is e-commerce integration leveraging space and time to uncover opportunities for travellers to take better advantage of time during delays, stores in other terminals of airport and keep up with gate changes to ensure packages get to passengers before departure.
These opportunities also extend to arriving/returning passengers who can have their groceries ready for pick up upon their arrival/return to conveniently take home with them regardless of the time of day.
All of this was developed for Kai Schmidhuber of Frankfurt Airport courtesy of Kian Gould and the team at AOE, along with Magento, representing just one more example of how omni-channel continues to transform how we’ll all shop in the future!
Let’s now re-imagine all of the ordinary in a digital lens to see where space and dead time can be leveraged; the waiting room, concert venues, commuter trains/stations, sports stadiums, the gas station and even the shopping mall are all places ripe for re-invention.
Time to digitally rethink the ordinary to discover and create the truly exceptional.
Cheers
Jeff Ashcroft
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Are your retail customers finding you less attractive lately? Consider your position on the seven signs shared below, and you may decide your retail business needs an omni-channel makeover!
This is not just an idle suggestion we’re making, as the omni-channel retail buzz is quickly becoming a roar and with good reason.
Not since the advent of price tags, cash registers and the ubiquitous apparel hanger has there been a retail industry innovation poised to create such major change.
I study disruptive technology, specifically innovative technology that gains so much momentum that it disrupts markets and ultimately businesses. In the past several years, disruptive technology has become so pervasive that I’ve had to further focus my work on studying only disruptive technologies that are impacting customer and employee behavior, expectations and values and affecting customer and employee experiences. I can hardly keep up with today let alone consider the potential disruption that looms ahead in every sector imaginable including new areas that will emerge and displace laggard perspectives, models and processes.
The image above represents the focal point of my work in 2009 – 2012. I called it the “Wheel of Disruption” (WoD) and it was meant to document and convey that the “Golden Triangle” of real-time, mobile and social, surrounded by the cloud, was inspiring incredible innovation and thus producing new and disruptive new apps, tools and services.
Watson Analytics Allows Brands to Use Everyday Language to Identify Hidden Data Connections and Drive Better Business Performance
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today (Dec 3rd) announced new commerce capabilities that help online merchants easily gain the insights needed to evaluate category and product performance and make quick and effective merchandising decisions. Leveraging cognitive capabilities from Watson Analytics, IBM Commerce Insights allows practitioners to gain a real-time view into customer behavior and market factors that are impacting their business, proactively identify opportunities and roadblocks and take informed actions to increase sales and business performance.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since the launch of X. In the last two weeks, I’ve hosted conversations about the promise of experience design in London, Düsseldorf, Oslo, Sydney and Geelong.
Somewhere along the Atlantic, I was asked to answer a few questions ahead of my arrival in Geelong for the Pivot Summit by Courtney Crane of the Geelong Advertiser. Thanks to the magic (or curse) of inflight wifi, I was able to make her deadline. But it was more than a Q&A, it was the purpose of the conversation that stopped time to reflect on how this once bustling city is proactively investigating how to build upon its history to adapt for the future.
Selling change to organizations is difficult. One reason is that change represents a threat, a chance for things to go wrong. It’s no wonder that many people avoid anything that smells of change.
Another reason is that different people in the organization have different worldviews, different narratives.
Consider the difference between “offense” and “defense” when confronting a new idea.
The person who is playing offense wants to get ahead. Grow market share. Get promoted. She wants to bring in new ideas, help more customers, teach the people around her. Change is an opportunity to further the agenda, change is a chance to reshuffle the deck.
The person who is playing defense, though, wants to be sure not to disappoint the boss. Not to drop a ball, break what’s working or be on the spot for something that didn’t happen.
Either posture, surprisingly, can lead to significant purchases and change.
Defensive purchases are things like a better insurance policy, or a more reliable auditor. Offensive purchases include sophisticated new data mining tools and a course in public speaking.
The defensive purchaser switches to a supplier that offers the same thing for less money. The offensive posture demands a better thing, even if it costs more.
Not only are people divided in their posture related to change, they’re also in different camps when it comes to going first. For some, buying something first is a thrill and an opportunity, for others, it’s merely a threat.
While we often associate defense with late adoption, that’s not always true. The military, for example, frequently pushes to buy things before ‘the bad guys’ do. For example, the internet was pioneered and supported by the defense establishment.
And while you can imagine that some people seeking to make change happen are eager geeks of whatever is new, it’s very common for a proven success (a titan) to wait until an idea is proven, then overinvest in putting it to use in order to continue to steamroll the competition. Trader Joe’s did this with laser scanners… They like change, as long as that change is proven to help them win even more than they already are.
Play with the graph a little bit and consider who you are contacting and what story you’re telling…
Seth Godin
Those in the know in online retail have been leveraging dropship vendors to create expanded ‘endless aisle’ assortments for a number of years now.
Through the ongoing development of the Matrix Retail approach it’s now become apparent a new reality is emerging best described simply as the ‘Endless Store.’
Just as an ‘endless aisle’ expands assortments well beyond the current store and retailer stocked web assortments, creating the ‘Endless Store’ connects and extends the bricks & mortar and virtual environments within which retailers operate. The potential for dramatically improved customer service and functional development of a unified retail customer experience is now within reach of every retailer.
