Amazon has bought Whole Foods. Is it time for Walmart and the rest of humanity to give up and accept the inevitable; Amazon world domination?
Bad news for brick and mortar retail; Amazon is opening more stores
If you are in retail, we can help you build an effective Omnichannel strategy to compete with Amazon. Contact us.
Well folks, it has finally happened. Nearly every major department store in the USA and Canada, including Macy’s, Kohl’s, Walmart, and Sears, have closed or intend to close hundreds of stores.
This is due to more competition and lower profit margins and the continuing rise of ecommerce.
When an anchor store like Sears shuts down, it may also lead to a “downward spiral in performance” for shopping malls.
How Can Brick and Mortar Retailers React?
Many believe that there is no way to stop the retail decline, but there may be a few solutions for the big stores in the age of Omnichannel marketing:
- Diversify – the old retail model has failed to adjust to modern realities and the shopping habits of the modern consumer.
- Follow Amazon’s lead – they say if you can’t beat them join them. Most big retailers have great online stores but cannot compete with Amazon. It may be time for the big retailers to adopt the “Amazon model” in fulfillment, pricing and customer experience.
- Review what your customer’s needs and values are: Millennial and Gen Z consumers in general have vastly different needs to the older generation that viewed shopping in terms of visiting a store. They want products are ethically made, with fair salaries paid, environmentally friendly and authentic.
If you are looking to diversify, or need help with reviewing your business model, we have experts who can work with your company to help you survive the “Amazon onslaught.” Alternatively, we can also help you transform from a brick and motor business to an efficient and profitable pure play model.
Contact us to discuss.
Many ecommerce firms are setting up stores on Shopify, even if they already have a presence on Amazon. How far will the Shopify revolution go?
In 2016 the company’s e-commerce platform had purchases by more than 100 million individual shoppers. Here is an interesting video on the power of Shopify:
If you are wondering if Shopify is right for you, contact us.
Amazon Business has arrived in England. We have had a great experience with them, from placing an order right through to fulfillment. If you are in UK, try them.
Every major sporting event presents a great opportunity for ecommerce sales to sell. As Matt Lindar noted recently, Super Bowl means super business for some online retailers. It’s not only team merchandise that sells but anything else associated with advertisers and online stores, including Ebay, Amazon and dedicated Sports ecommerce merchants. 
The question is, what can you do to get a share of the pie? Here are some ideas:
- Increase traffic to your website by writing content that is associated with the big event.
- Offer incentives or special discounts during to the event period. Many companies had special offers before and after the Superbowl.
- Run contests and puzzles or other user engaged activities based on the event.
- Advertise! if you can afford it, afford on high visibility media, sports magazines and even TV stations that are screening the event.
- Use event related keywords and add hyperlinks to your posts during the event period.
- Direct Mail – send a carefully crafted and witty email to your email list just before or after the event with special offers or event related promotion.
- Offer expedited delivery at no extra charge during the event week.
- Promote your special offer through multimedia, Youtube videos and create other engaging content.
- Launch a creative social media campaign related to the event just prior to start.
For more ideas on how you can increase sales during a big, special event, contact us.
Amazon’s dominance continues into 2017. Can anyone survive or compete? Here are some useful strategies to survive the Amazon giant and other low cost players:
- Maintain a low cost distribution and fulfillment strategy: Avoid high shipping costs by using flat rate shipping – here your store will pays a set price to ship a specific box irrespective of what the shipment weighs or how far away its destination is in the domestic destinations for USA and Canada. Amazon succeeds primarily due to its fulfilment capabilities.
- Use the correct packaging – bigger boxes mean higher shipping costs.
- Develop a concrete online brand strategy to pull product searches away from Amazon and move them towards Google so that your products have visibility and your pure play ecommerce site has visibility and traffic.
- Forget the Price War: It is always challenging to compete on price, you can’t win a price war with low-cost players like Amazon.
- Differentiate your business on design, innovation, and continuously offer a unique product mix.
- Smart businesses don’t use these tactics in isolation, you have to continuously innovate
and be open to experimentation. - Reduce costs and minimise working capital (cash management).
- Maximize return on assets and maintain high asset utilization.
- Standadize products to reduce costs of testing.
For a comprehensive analysis of your needs and effective solutions, contact us.
What do you get if you connect the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence? Amazon Go! Have you watched the Amazon Go ad? Imagine walking into a store, shopping and walking out without any kind of physical transaction. Everything you choose is logged and charged directly to your mobile phone. Watch this:
Have you tried the new Amazon Echo? What was your experience? Here is the view from CNET reviews:
We like the way is is portable and be easily stashed away anywhere. It is not the prettiest, cutest device out there but certainly has great functionality. Give it a try.
