Retail discovery has yet another channel, this time it really is a channel … well actually a streaming service. Experimentation in customer discovery is extending beyond social commerce into the greater media sphere. June 2021 was a busy month for Netflix's ecommerce projects. The streaming giant cut the virtual ribbon on The Netflix Store, an outlet for limited edition collections based on Netflix programming. Also in June, the platform debuted the resplendent limited series Halston and launched the adjacent Halston X Netflix eveningwear …
Why the New Bed Bath & Beyond Store is the Best Retail Redo…Ever
Few individual retail stores have had the ups and downs of the Bed Bath & Beyond store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. And with its grand reopening in July as the flagship for the rapidly changing home furnishings retailer, the store has taken on yet another persona, as the future of the Big Box chain. And in this renovation process, a case can be made that it may be the most dramatic transformation of an existing physical store in recent retail history…perhaps all of retail history. That’s how transformed the store is. Bed Bath & …
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Cater to Your Customers — Locally
There's an old adage: You get what you get, and you don't get upset. Clearly, that doesn't apply to retail. For some time now, the axiom has been customers want what they want, when they want it. And Covid-19 accelerated that. Apparel shoppers want choices, and they want the stores and clothes to reflect their local tastes and demands. And they still want what they want when, where and how they want it delivered. Post-Pandemic Paradigms Coresight Research says the pandemic "accelerated consumer disinterest in homogeneous physical retail …
The Great Fragmentation and AI: The Case for Neighborhood Shops
If you think of yesterday’s “mass market” as a nice glass bowl, that market today has shattered into a thousand small fragments of glass. This was the opening sentence in Chapter 4 of my co-authored book with Michael Dart, Retail’s Seismic Shift, published in 2017. Easy Come, Easy Go Do you remember the “must-have toy,” or must have latest fashion trend, (probably triggered by John Fairchild splashing the “miniskirt” across the front page of WWD), or the hot jeans brand of the moment? Or how about the many other examples across consumer …
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Why Omnichannel Is So Hard
Over the past decade, "omnichannel" has become one of the most common buzzwords in retail. Retail executives, industry consultants, and analysts all agree on the importance of integrating the brick-and-mortar and online channels so that customers can move seamlessly between them. Yet while there's consensus about what retailers should do, adapting to this new way of doing business isn't simple. Of course, some prominent retailers like Target have made omnichannel look easy. Target got a late start, having made a boneheaded move to outsource …
Living [and Shopping] Through Clouds of Emotion
By the 1980s, marketers understood that when consumers had all the “essential stuff” they needed and that in the future, those shoppers would buy based on desire, driven by emotion. That supported Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of human needs, a psychological theory first put forth in the 1940s. When the majority of peoples’ physical needs for shelter, food, clothing and such have been met they can venture into the realm of personal relationships, social connections, status among peers, feelings of accomplishment—and ultimately, aspirational …
Is the “Self-Love” Industrial Complex Here to Stay?
The term “self-love” has been applied to everything from showing more skin to using a meal planning journal. But marketing is no longer centered around making consumers feel bad about themselves, and I think we can all agree that is a beautiful thing. “Self-love” and “self-care” have joined spiritually themed merchandise as the newest marketing musts. The growth of these categories was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which over 1/3 of consumers increased their self-care. To date, a whopping 9 in 10 Americans practice some form of …
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Saks’ Bold Move
When news broke recently that HBC was splitting Saks Fifth Avenue into two, spinning off its ecommerce business from its brick-and-mortar stores, speculation swirled about the thinking behind the move. That news was followed shortly by an announcement that it was doing the same for its off-price Saks Off 5th company, separating the stores from its digital platform. The Joys of Going Private Since going private in 2019, HBC CEO Richard Baker doesn’t have to answer to the Street. He has a free pass to assert that the Saks move is “redefining …