Amazon is a retail juggernaut. Last year the company was responsible for 5% of total US retail sales (online and offline). Their growth and expansion seems unstoppable at the same time that we see other iconic retailers (Sears, JC Penney, Radio Shack, Payless Shoes, etc.) struggling to stay alive. Given the convenience and potential for cost savings it’s easy to say that the future of retail is online and brick-and-mortar establishments are a thing of the past but this FastCompany article,”The Future Of Retail In The Age Of Amazon“, offers a different perspective. Fair warning – this is a fairly lengthy article but it provides a number of good discussion topics.
The article starts by discussing the decline in traditional malls but talks about investments being made by the Mall of America to attract younger buyers. While online shopping has certainly contributed to traditional store closures, the article also claims over-expansion and lack of investment are significant contributors to decline as well. Even with all of the well publicized store closings there was still a net increase of 4000 stores in 2017 and a higher increase expected this year. The article spotlights Target and talks about some of the investments they’re making to move back to partnered custom products and emphasize visual merchandising in their store design. Much of the article alludes to the idea that a focus on the shopping experience can provide a unique value proposition that allows traditional retail to differentiate itself from online retail.
Students do a surprising amount of traditional retail shopping and you can get some good discussions started when asking them to articulate why they choose to buy in-store as opposed to buying online.
Brands partner with other brands all the time for various reasons. One motivator is to help improve your brand preference. By associating with another brand that your customers view positively, you hope customers will, over time, associate the two brands together and thereby provide a halo benefit. One example would be the NFL’s partnership with the Susan G Komen foundation. Another motivator for partnership can be customer acquisition. An example here would be AARP’s partnership with Consumer Cellular. This partnership provides AARP with a selling point to prospective customers (join and gain access to these discounts) and it provides Consumer Cellular with a customer acquisition channel.
Facebook started as a platform for college students and quickly became popular with teenagers as well. As the platform went through the adoption curve it started to pick up older users. As the Facebook demographic shifted, so too did it’s appeal to the younger audience that helped establish its dominance. This USA Today article, “
Marketing has always relied on creativity. Creativity in promotion design, product definition, copy, and more. Today, more and more we’re seeing opportunity for technology advancements to augment marketing strategy. The 16th (soon to be published) edition of our book, Essentials of Marketing, focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on marketing. You don’t have to look far to see examples of that impact today. Big data has been talked about (and utilized successfully) for years but AI, virtual reality, and other advancements are finding their way into marketing as well.
I saw this cartoon and it reminded me of many meetings I was in while working in various marketing roles. As marketers we often have an abundance of information to consider and goals to achieve. Figuring out where to start and how to create a cohesive strategy is a challenge many businesses, large and small, struggle with. In Essentials of Marketing we provide a framework and process for creating a marketing strategy. It all starts with bringing in information from your customers, company, competitors, and external market environment (context). From there the process organizes and filters that information, applies segmentation and positioning approaches, and at that point creating your marketing mix becomes much more straightforward. A diagram of the process is shown below and more information can be found in our book. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the process and then each subsequent chapter dives into detail on one of the components.