New Challenges for Retailers
Now is the time to look forward. Retailers are facing the huge challenge of product overstock situations combined with a need to focus on cashflow.
The need to generate cash flow is forcing increased competition for consumer spending in a now more cautious and price-sensitive world.
Read our white paper on:
"How To Implement A Flexible Pricing Strategy To Maximize Sales"
The Strategic Approach to Solving the Problem
The benefits of OMNICHANNEL retailing, in terms of having a consistent customer experience across all consumer touchpoints, are well accepted. In order to stimulate their cash flow, Retailers now need to make their offerings even more attractive to win over customers who are likely to be more price sensitive and less loyal than ever but who still want to buy ‘value’ and not ‘cheap’. This will be relevant across all retail sectors from convenience to apparel and beyond.
Retailers need to focus on optimising the customer experience and making it as easy as possible for the consumer to buy when in-store. That means having the correct goods available for sale, displayed in an appealing manner with all prices and product offers clearly displayed and easy to understand and read in order to maximise selling and upselling opportunities.
Turning Strategy into Action
Retailers need to take all of the attributes of the omnichannel approach to retailing and apply them as effectively as possible to the total stores’ estate. While this short video showing a clothing example, the principles of Omnichannel marketing are still clear and can be applied to many retail sectors including convenience stores: Omnichannel Video
By focusing on the in-store pricing and price mark-down strategy and implementing flexible technology that allows store staff, with corporate direction, to react to consumer behaviour, the ‘Customer Experience’ can simply and quickly be adapted to maximise their spend using such tools as “WAS/NOW” pricing and “Special Offer” labelling.
How Can Technology Help?
If any retailer is using handwritten ‘mark-down’ and ‘Special Offer’ tickets, there is clearly scope to improve the in-store customer experience and the retailer’s image in the eye of the consumer. Likewise, with the use of price guns in-store.
Technology solutions, which give the retailer a low-cost but effective pricing toolset which is expandable as the retailer grows, range from just a few hundred dollars per unit as a capital purchase.