Survey gives insight to the journey to online purchase

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We teach our students that it is critical to analyze and understand customer behavior before developing marketing strategies. With all the data available tracking the online purchase journey, many firms are gathering insights all the time. In addition, surveys can provide further insight about how online consumers shop. This article, “Survey reveals how customer make online product decisions” would be a nice addition to a lecture on consumer behavior (Chapter 5), online retail (Chapter 12), or aspects of promotion like owned media (Chapter 16). The article shares interesting information including:

  • Consumers are not very loyal — “only 14% say they likely wouldn’t switch to a competitive product if their first choice wasn’t available.”
  • Many consumers are research shoppers — “82% of respondents are likely to look at multiple locations for information on products.”
  • Information search often starts with online retailers (e.g., Amazon and eBay) where 44% of respondents indicated they looked first, quite a bit higher than those reporting they started with search engines (19%). Amazon now earns a lot from advertising revenue because of this trend.

The article reports a number of other findings and also links to an interesting article with data on social shopping during the pandemic.

Mattress firms creating value (?) with financing deals…

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The mattress industry is a pretty crazy (check out “The Great Mattress Conspiracy: Why Are There So Many Mattress Stores?” on Endless Thread, podcast and story). You might check out the podcast for a fun example when you cover retailing. Or ethics. You might also check out one of our previous posts, “The Gray World of Online Reviews” (Teach the 4 Ps) — tags include ethics and online reviews.

Onto our story of the day and we are back in the retail mattress industry. With the emergence of new mattress products designed for easy shipping, online mattress stores (Casper, Leesa, Tuft & Needle), this market continues to be very competitive. Retail brick-and-mortar store Mattress Firm has closed 700 stores and is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now they are competing on financing. In fact, Mattress Firm will give you six years of 0% interest on a mattress purchase of up to $3999. Financing is certainly one way to create value for customers — and the automobile industry has done it for years — but does it make sense for buyers of mattresses. We will see. Learn more reading “6-year, 0% loan for a mattress? Intense competition continues to grip mattress industry,” USA Today, October 25, 2019.

Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Turn to Scrambled Merchandising

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The concept of scrambled merchandising (“carrying any product lines they think they can sell profitably) has existed in practice and in Essentials of Marketingas for many editions – since before my time as co-author (and that is more than a dozen years). Yet the practice seems to be gaining popularity in the face of growing online competition as brick-and-mortar stores seek new ways to enhance profitability. In this USA Today article and video, “Retail mashups bring experiences such as getting a tattoo and shopping together,” (September 11, 2017) we learn of some interesting examples of the practice.

Sharing some of these examples in class could be fun. You could show your students the video just to get it started. To extend their learning, ask your students about the potential benefits each party might receive for such a pairing. Use one of the specific examples in the article to make it more concrete. So, for example, each party might be exposed to new target markets. For the tattoo artist, the cost of operating in the back of an existing store might be lower than opening his own shop – and Shinola can generate additional rental revenue. These short  questions break up a lecture and encourage students’ critical thinking around retailing—a topic they already know something about.

What’s Now? Chapter 12 – Whole Foods opens new 365 stores

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365-by-wfm-store-logo 2Whole Foods has seen its sales and profits decline recently. In response, the food retailer has opened some new stores under the name 365. Read more about 365 in this article “Whole Foods Is Getting Killed by Aldi. Is a Millennial Grocer Chain the Fix?” (Bloomberg Businessweek, June 20, 2016).

What is the target market for Whole Foods new 365 stores? Is this different from a typical Whole Foods store? How is the 365 marketing strategy (compare each of the 4 Ps) different from that used by Whole Foods? Do you think it will work? 

Amazon Dash Makes Sure Customers Don’t Run Out…

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Is Amazon’s Dash brilliant or a future failure? What I love about Amazon is they keep on trying new ideas. Some of these ideas fail (think Amazon Fire Phone) while others soar (Amazon Prime). This company is not afraid to fail and  that is one reason why it succeeds.

An interesting discussion could follow from the timing of the introduction — the day before April Fool’s made some question whether Amazon Dash was for real. This article at AdWeek suggests that the timing was a stroke of genius. Do you agree? Either way it is a fun new Amazon feature to discuss when you cover online retail or public relations. We have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.