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The Multi-Channel Retailer’s Reality in a Post-Amazon World: Benchmark Report 2012
November 14, 2012
Customers have become channel agnostic, and as a result, retailers know they must be as well. But this year, the challenges typically associated with operating a successful eChannel — all are overcome by cross-channel coordination and inventory deployment. Key Findings Include: 50% of those with top-performing sales (Retail Winners) are operating more than 4 brands or [...]
Marketing in Retail: Making the Case for the CMO
September 5, 2012
The retail marketing leader currently seems halfway through a transition — reporting in the right place, but without the span of control or influence that will help that leader succeed as retail enterprises transform themselves into customer-centric organizations. And that serves as the primary theme we found in our 2012 benchmark on the state of marketing [...]
Omni-Channel 2012: Cross-Channel Comes of Age
June 12, 2012
When RSR first started conducting cross-channel benchmarks, our going-in thesis involved testing whether retailers thought multi-channel retailing was an important priority. At the time, not all of them did. Today, we find ourselves at a new inflection point — no longer is the discussion about whether cross-channel is important. Instead, whether they view it as strategic or not, [...]
eCommerce 2012: Back to the Future
January 26, 2012
While virtually all retailers expect more revenue to ultimately come from the online channel than ever before, they are more challenged than ever to keep up with evolving consumer behavior. Never before has an exciting online shopping experience that understands the customer’s lifestyle – and how the brand and products can engage and suit that lifestyle [...]
Customer Centricity 2.0: The Rise of the Chief Marketing Officer
December 14, 2011
Retailers are currently struggling with something beyond a proliferation of channels – it’s more like an explosion – both for selling to and communicating with consumers. This disruption is hitting the marketing department, as retailers rush to provide a single customer experience across digital and traditional channels. It is also felt within the retail executive [...]
The Local Approach: The State of Localized Advertising in Retail
September 15, 2011
By Nikki Baird & Steve Rowen As retailers struggle to create relevant, “local” experiences in digital channels, they are also challenged to maintain their stores’ relevancy – retailers must rethink the store’s role in a shopping process that increasingly relies on digital experiences. RSR undertook an evaluation of how well retailers are using digital experiences to [...]
Keeping Up with the Mobile Consumer
September 1, 2011
By Nikki Baird & Steve Rowen While much has been made of consumer adoption of smart phones and the havoc it is wreaking on the retail enterprise, very little data exists as to how, exactly, retailers are responding. What are the biggest priorities – apps, mobile sites, mobile marketing campaigns? What about the platforms for devices [...]
Enabling Buy Anywhere – Get Anywhere: The Future of Cross-Channel
July 15, 2011
Empowered by new technologies, consumers now routinely use several channels to make a single purchasing decision. The compelling value of smart mobile technologies in particular is that they are with the consumer wherever she goes. That enables a fundamentally different shopping experience. And it means that for the first time since the barcode, retailers are [...]
Social Media’s Impact on Customer Engagement
May 15, 2011
Social media channels offer forward-thinking retailers a true chance to engage with customers the way they live, and in return, the way they shop. Properly executed, social media offers the opportunity to become a more personalized part of current and potential customers’ lives and build genuine loyalty – the hallmark of Retail Winners throughout the [...]
The Digital Divide: Digital Gifting Among Top Internet Retailers
September 15, 2010
Just as the digital format has completely changed music, and is rapidly eating away at movies and books, a wave of change is headed for money. Consumers can already pay by PayPal Mobile on their mobile phones at some locations. Just about every single major card issuer is testing some kind of mobile payment scheme. [...]