Guest Blog by Suzie Brown

Deals and savings are now a part of consumers’ regular shopping experience as they seek savings from multiple sources and digital deals continue to evolve. They are gaining attention in the media and among consumers as interest in deal seeking remains strong. Just as consumers are exploring new ways to get a deal, marketers also are testing various methods to attract today’s shopper. There will continue to be a blend of traditional and new media as consumers seek value in planning their purchases.

According to the NCH Marketing Services Inc. Coupon Facts Report, consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers used the free standing insert to distribute the largest volume of all their coupons in 2012, increasing the media’s share to 90.1% of the 305 billion coupons issued. Marketers continue to experiment with the audience reach and scale potential of various digital media.

Tablets and smartphones are changing consumer behaviors by adding greater freedom, portability and personalized experiences as users simply tap to get email, news, information and entertainment on demand. As the digital world moves with speed, marketers are continually challenged not only to stay abreast of this changing media environment but also to get ahead of it.

Consider this:

• U.S. adults are spending one-third of their media time with digital (Scarborough multi-Market August 2012);
• 70% of mobile searches result in action within one hour  (Mobile Marketer, June 2012);
• 14% of U.S. adults own a tablet today– up 400% in the last 12 months (Nielsen, Jan. 2012).
• Beyond print-at-home, paperless coupons are being made available via retailer websites to download offers primarily as a feature of a retailer’s loyalty card program. In some cases, these offers are targeted to consumers based on their shopping behaviors and opt-in interests; and
• All paperless vehicles combined, including mobile, have grown to represent a little more than 1% of all coupons redeemed.

The traditional path to purchase was linear and brought the consumer from awareness to action one step at a time. Depending on the business objective, media choices were clear-cut. Today, consumers are in control and their media habits, which are changing at a remarkable rate.  The once linear path to purchase has evolved requiring that advertisers use a mix of media to stay both visible and relevant throughout the consumers varied decision making cycle/matrix. Valassis has a proprietary advantage of delivering targeted, print and digital solutions to engage consumers at every point along the path to purchase.

For years, we have heard that the consumer is king, and this rings so true today. Marketers must rethink the ways they understand and activate this value-centric consumer. Shoppers now choose how and where they want to receive their advertising, and for that matter, what they receive. A dynamic integrated media plan with traditional and new media provides high visibility, flexibility and efficiency for both national and local campaigns, and delivers value where consumers plan, shop, buy and share.

Valassis is Re-Imagining Reach for the way today’s consumer plans, shops and purchases, providing clients with a means to reach consumers both offline and online. Advertisers need to incorporate a blended approach of both traditional and digital promotions to reach and activate today’s deal-seeking consumer.

Suzie Brown, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Valassis, has more than 25 years of industry experience in media, advertising and consumer promotion. Valassis is a leader in intelligent media delivery, providing over 15,000 advertisers proven and innovative media solutions to influence consumers wherever they plan, shop, buy and share. 

Guest Blog By Michael Hemsey

For Toys “R” Us, February has not been a good month. The global retailer’s CEO, Gerald Storch stepped down after the company failed to hit revenue targets, as well as lackluster same store and overall store sales during the 2012 holiday season. While Toys “R” Us’ recent miss stems from heightened discount competition, some of the company’s shortcomings might be internal too – hyper-reliance on excessive discounts.

Discounts, as we have seen, can do a lot of damage.

But at least there’s a lesson to be learned by other retailers. Despite Storch being credited for heralding an omnichannel strategy at Toys “R” Us, relying heavily on in-store and merchandising across multiple channels, increasingly, consumers are striving for quality brand experiences as much as they seek quality prices.

And with experiences being central to customer engagement and loyalty, here are five things that retail customers can expect more of this year:

#1. The continued rise of corporate philanthropy and brand social awareness: Panera Bread is a good example. While the brand is spending some $70 million on its “Live Consciously” campaign through multiple channels, its Panera Bread Foundation established Panera Cares Cafés. These are places offering variable pricing based on customers’ ability to pay, if at all. Instances like this support recent eMarketer data which finds 56% of US Internet users have purchased a product based on a brand’s cause allegiances.

#2. An increase in loyalty program transparency, where fewer hoops means happier customers: It should be obvious – shoppers want the most bang for their loyalty buck. Consider gas stations. Most gas station loyalty programs’ link their rewards to convenience store purchases. But British Petroleum is changing that with its BP Driver Rewards program. Starting in April 2013, BP will launch a new loyalty program where consumers earn 5 cents off every gallon of gas they pump, after the first 20 gallons. Consumers will see direct savings for buying something they already need: fuel. Similarly, Winn Dixie’s Fuelperks program earns users 5 cents off per gallon pumped at Shell stations for every $50 they spend in groceries.  Simple, honest and direct loyalty programs mean business and retailers are eager to jump on board.

#3. Customer engagement that uses 21^st century Big Data metrics to drive traditional outreach: Or as Claud Cecil Gurney, founder of design firm de Gournay describes a consumer purchase: “[Feeling] like something they’ve created for themselves rather than something that’s been bought off a shelf and stuck in their house.” Accomplishing that genuineness requires constant engagement across all channels. It also requires acting on gathered data which is a central tenet of the omnichannel loyalty experience, an enterprise-level initiative to drive, track, measure and reward incremental behavior throughout the enterprise and customer experience.

#4. The improved organization and de-siloing of Big Data: This one’s a no-brainer but it bears repeating. A recent Forbes article discusses how brands should opt for a single “golden version” of customer data and maximize engagement by taking a holistic view of the customer. To me, this sounds a lot like convergence and the need to bring loyalty data and traditional CRM data under one de-siloed roof. Forbes refers to it as “master data management.” Whatever you call it, convergence is key. The good news is that, according to a 2012 Retail Horizons report, nearly 67% of retailers surveyed ranked customer satisfaction as their top strategic initiative for 2012. Another 82% said customer service strategies would be top priority, up from 75% the year before. If that was the sentiment in 2012, you can be sure 2013 will be just as intense.

#5. Growth of alternative forms of payment: We’ve written about the increasing popularity of mobile wallets and the brand possibilities that come with Apple’s Passbook app. But here’s another take. Walmart is expanding use of its iPhone “Scan & Go” app to 40 Denver, Co. stores. The app allows customers to scan products while they’re shopping. When they’re done, the app organizes purchases under a single QR code that can be read by QR-equipped readers at checkout. Think of Apple stores, where salespeople are on hand to scan products throughout the store. There’s no checkout line. Walmart’s experiment is proving similarly effective in streamlining the in-store shopping and checkout process.

And if Walmart’s doing it, others will follow.

But as Toys “R” Us begins the search for a CEO, it would be wise for it – and other retailers – to keep these five customer expectations in mind. An omnichannel approach is great and competitive prices are too. But that’s just the first step toward enhancing loyalty and driving ROI. Enhanced social good, loyalty program transparency, Big Data and the use of its metrics in a de-siloed data environment, and one that relies on innovative payment methods are increasingly vital components to include in the loyalty mix.

Michael Hemsey is president of Kobie Marketing

Guest Blog by Millie Park

A recent Forrester report showed that compared to older generations, 18-to-24-year-olds don’t mind that their data is being shared online. According to the report, only 33 percent say they are concerned about access to their behavioral data. By contrast, 47 percent of 55-to-64-year-olds said they were worried about that kind of access. Also, the younger group is more willing to exchange personal data in exchange for discounts. Clearly, brands should target younger demographics to share data and make online purchases, right?  Well, not entirely. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.  In this case, actions speak louder than age.

Marketers are continuously trying to improve their understanding of demographics. That’s great, but in my opinion, this can also be limiting. This particular study doesn’t necessarily tell me that 18-24 year olds are the best demographic for retailers to target online. In fact, the glass is more than half full with the 55-64 year old demographic where 53% do see value in using online data. Uncle Ray is on Facebook, “liking” your products and services. Grandma Helen is on Pinterest pinning recipes and sweaters to knit.  Don’t succumb to the ageism trap – they are engAGEd. Think beyond targeting individuals based on demographics. Marketers should focus on blending demographics (like age) with customer behavior, preferences and purchases, to personalize the online experience and negate any concerns about sharing behavioral data. Prince almost had it right when he sang, “Act your age not your shoe size”. Marketers should USE your age AND your shoe size.

We’ve seen consumers flock to where they have a great experience, no matter the demographic. The same applies to online interactions. As a marketer, if you have profile data and/or collect behavioral data about visitors to your site, then use it to your advantage. Use it to drive that great experience. Use it to show the customer you know them. Use it to show the customer you care. Don’t use it to exclude or downplay age groups – combine it with demographic data to build a powerful customer profile. And if you are given the privilege of using customer data, treat it with respect. Don’t ask for it unless you’re going to use it and use it appropriately to drive a personalized experience. Remember, misuse and non-use of data will turn customers off – especially when it comes to explicit data customers give you, like preferences and birthdays.

All available data should be used to tailor offers and recommendations to individuals based on their history with you. How they interact with your site, what they view and search for, where they click, what they place in their carts, and ultimately what they purchase are all data points that you should fold into your personalization algorithms to use to drive the user experience. Continue to build an individual’s customer profile as you get to know them through various interactions. Add into the additional data like-demographics, product ratings, social data, and other third party data. Test to see what data truly moves the needle and what recommendations resonate with your customers. Now you’re really moving toward having your recommendations perform like a personal shopper.

By making it interesting and easy for the shopper to interact and transact with you, regardless of their age, you will be recognized with purchases and rewarded with loyalty. Age is nothing but a number. Loyalty lasts a lifetime.

Millie Park is Vice President and General Manager at ChoiceStream CONNECT

If you haven’t seen this yet, here is a little slice of JWT’s list of Retail – Things to Watch in 2013, brought to us by their JWTIntelligence center. You can find more on insights from JWT and JWTIntelligence at www.jwt.com, @JWT_Worldwide, www.jwtintelligence.com and @JWTIntelligence.

Ambushed by Amazon

The e-commerce giant started out as a threat to booksellers, but it’s fast becoming Enemy No. 1 to retailers of all stripes…Amazon will prove an “extremely disruptive force,” as Kantar Retail’s Bryan Gildenberg puts it, with the rise of “showrooming.”

B2C/P2P Partnerships

As the peer-powered marketplace continues to heat up, look for established brands to strike partnerships with fledgling peer-to-peer services…Both Gap and Pepsi Next recently held promotions with TaskRabbit, which helps users outsource tasks.

Click-and-Collect Shopping

Already gaining popularity in parts of Europe, “click and collect” melds digital and physical commerce by letting customers order online, then pick up the goods (frequently groceries) at a store nearby…A few U.S. retailers are testing the waters, including Ahold’s Peapod.

Clockless Day

As the pace of life speeds up and more people work nontraditional hours… Consumers want to continue with their lives 24/7, whether it’s eating, shopping, exercising, working, etc., and businesses will be expected to cater to those expectations.

Cutting out the Middleman

The success of vertically integrated e-commerce players…will spur a host of new niche brands that cut out middlemen and sell quality products online at below-market rates.

Dads in the Aisles

With women just as tied up with careers as men, and the ranks of stay-at-home dads multiplying, more marketers will lose their singular focus on moms…we’ll see market research taking the male perspective into account, goods retooled for male appeal and messaging that acknowledges the man’s changing role.

JWT also discusses the importance of Geofencing, Individual Attention, Online Groceries, Retailers Enable Recycling, Self-Service, Shopping Hotels, Tablet Shopping, Variable Pricing and Window Shopping.

Guest Blog by Mark Simon

Paid Google product listings (PLAs) accounted for 17 percent of ad spend at the search engine this past Q4 2012. Across the entire search engine market, PLAs accounted for 10.7 percent of overall spend — almost as big a slice as that accounted for by Bing and Yahoo. PLAs – which power Google’s now-paid shopping service (formerly known as Google Base and Froogle) had only been introduced in October, so the spend ramp up was especially impressive.

Okay – we know that PLAs are working out for Google. But how are they performing for marketers?  Is there performance comparable to tried and true text ads? A report by Adobe comparing PLA to text ad performance in Q4 notes that PLA CTR is an astounding 34 percent higher than for text ads on Google’s SERP. But the same report found that AOV for PLAs is 12 percent lower than text ads — a function of the fact that many PLAs are directed at price-sensitive shoppers. ROI and CPC for both PLAs and text ads were roughly equivalent.

PLAs – love them or hate them – are here to stay, so here are five tips that we’ve found have been helpful for our clients as they design and deploy campaigns based on the PLA format.

1. Coordinate PLA with CSE Efforts

Although PLA creative and text is managed through Adwords, bidding is executed at the product level, thus being managed like a CSE listing. Your teams will need to manage each program separately while integrating the results from each. For example, if you learn that a particular set of PLAs are well, you can use this intelligence to build out keywords related to this product group.

2. Maintain Separate PLA and PPC Budgets.

PLA campaigns — like PPC campaigns — can blow through a lot of money in a short period of time, so mistakes can be expensive. Until you are completely comfortable, you may find it useful to set aside a specific PLA budget apart from PPC with a budget cap to avoid unpleasant surprises.

3. Phase PLA In

Like PPC campaigns, PLA campaigns need to “learn” where their optimal profitability settings are. One approach we’ve found valuable in the campaign learning process is to launch a PLA campaign with a client’s full catalog using an initial starting bid for all products. Categories or products that fail to meet expectations can then be systematically purged until the campaign reaches a base level of efficiency, after which further, more incremental tweaks can be made.

4. Get Creative

PLAs are visually eye-catching, although many marketers currently use stock images and boilerplate copy to populate them. You can strongly differentiate your offers by using better, wittier ad copy, custom images, in your PLA creative – this can make a big difference when price is not a strong differentiator.

5. Monitor, Test, and Refine

You will need to continually monitor PLA results, make appropriate adjustments in response to test results and seasonal changes, and take other hands-on action.

Make sure your team is prepared for this level of engagement. The good news is that the insights that your team learns about PLA performance can be ploughed back into your PPC and other online marketing efforts, making them all more efficient.

About the Author – Mark Simon

Mark Simon is senior vice president of sales and marketing at Didit, a digital advertising agency specializing in paid search, online display advertising, CSE feed management, SEO and Social Media. Mark has also served within industry organizations, holding the position of co-chair of the IAB Search Evangelism Committee, as well as being on the Shop.org member services committee and the DMA Research Forum Panel.

Guest Blog By Bram Hechtkopf 

For the past year, Kobie Marketing has been emphasizing the importance of adopting of an omnichannel loyalty strategy as a means to enhance customer engagement and drive ROI. Regardless of vertical – retail, entertainment, hospitality, travel, etc. – brands benefit when their loyalty program is embedded throughout the customer lifecycle and on channels of customers’ choice.

Most importantly, omnichannel loyalty promotes heightened customer experiences. That’s especially the case when the tenets of omnichannel loyalty are incorporated into a converged CRM-Loyalty management framework. Doing so is not just about revenue generation, but creating a genuine customer connection. The result is a happier, more engaged, eager-to-spend consumer. And such a consumer might also help reverse a trend that a new eMarketer report calls “shopping cart abandonment.”

Think of shopping cart abandonment like the online world’s brick-and-mortar showrooming equivalent. Shopping cart abandonment happens when an online consumer places items for purchase in their virtual cart, but doesn’t place the order. According to the report, 57% of respondents ditched their carts because they were not ready to purchase and wanted total cost plus shipping. The report also found:

·         56% wanted to save their cart for future purchase

·         55% said shipping costs were more than expected (thus the lost sale)

·         51% learned that their purchase costs were too low to qualify for free shipping

But the report successfully turns these numbers on their heads: shopping cart abandonment may not be as troubling as first thought. As with showrooming, the customer may not buy on one channel but may very well buy on another. And this is where omnichannel loyalty comes into play in two critical ways.

Virtual shopping carts should include a loyalty component – Something as simple as offering free shipping to loyalty members would seem to allay many customer concerns. For those who believe strongly in the shopping cart abandonment problem this could be critical. It’s also an ideal transaction point where more experience-driven offers can be promoted, lowering a consumers’ shipping cost concern.

Loyalty programs are rich in metrics – And the more customer knowledge retailers have – e.g., what they’ve purchased, how often, where and for what price –means that, rather than guessing over lost online shopping carts, brands will have the data to know if a given customer stocked up their shopping cart and then purchased those items elsewhere. In other words, information follows the consumer. For example, if a customer abandons an online shopping cart, the brick-and-mortar store can invite or incentivize (via a loyalty program) that customer’s return to the physical location.

Omnichannel loyalty continues to prove its worth – not as a marketing catchphrase, but as a tangible way to improve the customer experience, manage data and mitigate concerns addressed in studies such as eMarketer’s.

So is cart abandonment a serious problem or an overblown concern? Tell us what you think and continue the conversation.

Bram Hechtkopf is VP of Business Development & Marketing for Kobie Marketing.

Guest Blog by Ralph Crabtree

According to a 2012 New York Times column on the psychology of queuing, (Why Waiting is Torture,) Americans spend roughly 38 billion hours each year waiting in line. And those billions of hours aren’t exactly flying by. . . People overestimate how long they’ve waited in a line by an average of 36 percent. Author Alex Stone states, “The dominant cost of waiting is an emotional one: stress, boredom, that nagging sensation that one’s life is slipping away.” Not the experience that retail stores, supermarkets and other brick and mortar businesses want to be giving their customers, especially when the competition is just a mouse click away.

While it’s likely impossible (or at least cost prohibitive) to eliminate waiting completely, retailers can take steps to make the entire in store experience, including queuing, more enjoyable for shoppers. Here are several ways to ensure that a visit to your establishment is viewed with pleasure rather than pain:

Become a queue master. As the old adage goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In order to staff appropriately and minimize wait times, retailers need to know things like: “How many people are in my store?”; “How long are shoppers waiting in line?”; and “Are people exiting before completing a transaction?” A clear understanding of what’s happening minute-by-minute is critical—and this requires advanced technology capable of capturing real-time insight about shoppers’ behavior as they move about a store. Think of it as clickstream analytics for brick-and-mortar. Retailers can use this kind of behavior-based intelligence to deploy staff when and where they are needed, manage customer expectations and even design check out logistics, with the goal of delivering better, faster and more “high-touch” service.

Communicate. When it comes to waiting, a little knowledge goes a long way. Research shows that people get more frustrated when they don’t know how long their wait is going to be, or when their wait will end. Supported by accurate analytics that help estimate queue times based on in-store traffic and historical data, retailers can push updates to customers, either in-store, online or through a mobile app. This not only helps consumers choose when and where to shop, but also sets expectations. It may turn out, for example, that a queue that looks really long is actually moving quite fast—if customers know this, they are less likely to abandon their cart and your store.

Play up Your Store’s Real World Strengths. It’s true that online shoppers don’t have to wait in line. But brick and mortar environments also offer advantages that the Web can’t deliver. More personal, one-to-one service, for example. A place where consumers can try on or try out merchandise before they buy. An enjoyable experience that goes beyond mouse clicks and a laptop. The key word here is “enjoyable.” Staff your store with friendly, knowledgeable sales people who can answer questions about your products. Make sure employees are available to quickly help a shopper find a size, to recommend a book by a particular author, or locate an ingredient that’s needed for a new recipe. Design an environment that’s fun, interesting and offers something that online commerce can’t. (Lattes anyone?)      

Today’s consumers hate to wait. But they also like to shop. With a little insight, creativity and good old fashioned commitment to service, retailers really don’t have to torture their customers to make sales.

Ralph Crabtree is CTO of Brickstream

A journey-based approach for better sales conversion

By Anand Subramaniam, VP of Worldwide Marketing, eGain Corporation

Online abandonment is a big challenge

Analysts say online sales are expected to hit a trillion dollars this year—yet  web sites don’t make it easy for shoppers to buy. This in turn causes today’s impatient, distracted shopper to simply abandon a website with the click of a mouse or ‘swipe’ of a tablet. Shopping cart and online form abandonment rates are often upwards of 75%, and only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to lost sales on retail sites.  Shoppers often abandon websites even before they ‘grab’ the cart.  We call it ‘shopping abandonment’, a phenomenon that is even a bigger problem than just ‘shopping cart abandonment’.

Online customer journey: find, decide, buy

When shoppers buy online, they go through three distinct steps in their purchase process – find, decide and buy. Thanks to exploding SKU clutter, search dead-ends and content irrelevance, they might get lost or distracted, and simply defect.

Many eCommerce sites offer simple keyword search or online catalogs to help eager shoppers find what they are looking for, but keyword search is famously unintelligent and catalogs are not consumer-friendly. Would a skin cream be in the personal care, health or pharmacy section? Recently, when I searched for ‘glow-in-the dark analog watch’ on a leading retailer’s website, I got multiple pages of t-shirt hits with ‘glow-in-the-dark’ logos on them before there was anything related to watches.

Once the shopper finds some options, they’d need to next decide exactly what they want to buy. To make a decision, they typically search for product information and independent reviews, especially for non-commodity products. Many websites don’t aggregate this information – this is called federated search in tech jargon – causing shoppers to go elsewhere, never to return. Moreover, websites often make clueless, one-size-fits-all offers in the ‘decide’ phase that don’t move the customer journey forward.

Finally, when the shopper is ready to buy, they put things in their shopping cart and start to check out. But then they often quit at this stage for various reasons – whether it be the convoluted checkout process, shipping fees sticker shock, inability to find something, or another reason. When shopping for financial services and insurance, customers often need to fill out onerous online forms to ‘buy’. These forms are often complex, and there’s no real-time, in-purchase help, so the shopper simply gives up and goes elsewhere.

Creating ‘Wow’!

Connect with Wow:  Wouldn’t it be great if websites had a virtual assistant (aka concierge, chatbot, etc.) that made that all-important first connection with every shopper in a fun and clever way? What if the chatbot welcomed the visitor in an engaging manner, answered common questions in a natural language dialog, pushed relevant web pages to the shopper, gave website tours and even transitioned the conversation with all the context to a sales advisor, if needed? That’s what best-in-class, channel-integrated chatbots do – retail and telecommunications are among the industries leveraging virtual assistants for wow and cost savings. Chatbots can help to keep distracted and indecisive shoppers on your website long enough to move them forward in their purchase journey.

Guide to help find and decide: What if the website search understood the intent of the shopper and helped them ‘find’ by guiding them to what they need to buy through a step-by-step conversation – just like a competent sales person or an automobile GPS would? Intent-driven search technology and guided help based on AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies like Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) can make it happen.  One of our telecommunication clients have implemented this approach – the company’s web site recommends the most appropriate set of mobile phone models and subscriber plans, based on an interactive self-service conversation with subscribers.

Sticky websites move shoppers to the next stage in their journey, namely, ‘decide’. They federate search results from not only from their own websites, but also from independent product review and customer support forums, making it easier for the shopper to ‘decide’, without ever having to leave the website. These sites also make relevant offers such as content, coupons, real-time chat or cobrowse offers from sales advisors, etc. to help the shopper decide what to buy. Moreover, they make these offers based on 360-degree customer context from the current interaction as well as past multichannel interactions and transactions with the enterprise, complemented by relevant ‘big data’. A unified multichannel customer engagement hub enables this approach.

Collaborate to close: With technologies such as click-to-call and cobrowse, combined with concurrent text or video chat, sales advisors can help shoppers complete online forms or shopping transactions, show them around on the website and close the sale. Our clients have been able to increase online conversion by up to 200% with this approach!

Go get ‘em!

There’s no question that digital commerce will continue to grow rapidly. Businesses that wow online shoppers  with smarter and better engagement in their online journey will be better positioned to convert browsers to buyers and expand market share.

Anand Subramaniam is the vice president of worldwide marketing for eGain, a leading provider of customer service and knowledge management software.

Guest Blog by Gerrit McGowan

In an increasingly interconnected and cause-conscious world, retailers face growing pressure from their customers to do business in a socially-responsible way.

And corporate social responsibility (CSR) is good for business, because it encourages customer goodwill and loyalty.

These were two of the main themes discussed during the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, held last week in New York City. Thousands of exhibitors and hundreds of thousands of attendees from around the world gathered to network, discuss current trends and gain insights from industry leaders.

In his keynote address, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan pointed out that retail can play a big role in fostering economic growth in the developing world, which he characterized as “waiting for retail.”

Retail: A Potential Powerhouse for Economic Development

Retailers can do that, Annan said, by sourcing local materials and investing in their local partners.

Not only that, lower-income consumers control trillions of dollars and make everyday purchases at large retailers – so they are not to be ignored.

After all, the average GDP growth rate in China, India and most of Southeast Asia as well as Africa and parts of South America, has increased 4.8% over the past 10 years. And the best new markets for retailers include places we wouldn’t normally guess, such as Botswana, Mongolia and Azerbaijan. Furthermore, Edelman’s 2012 Goodpurpose study also found that consumers in these markets have high expectations of companies in terms of social causes.

Several other presenters discussed CSR and loyalty – which, when combined, can ultimately help retailers deepen customer engagement.

CSR and the Loyalty Connection: Meaningful Causes = Greater Engagement

“Charity alone won’t save the world. It actually takes…business and capitalism to do that as well,” said The Container Store CEO Kip Tindell during a joint presentation with Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

Businesses are thinking about a wider center of responsibility, Robb elaborated, saying that retailers should help their communities not because they have to, but because they want to. This entails supporting local programs, ensuring that sourcing practices are transparent and dealing fairly with supplier nations.

Schultz went further, essentially saying that, in this always-connected age, consumers can quickly research companies’ business practices and base purchasing decisions according to what they find – i.e., they tend to give their loyalty to companies whose cause affinities align with their own.

When a customer develops an emotional connection with a brand, that customer is likely to share it – by recommending the brand – with family, friends and colleagues, not only in person, but also on social networks. They become, essentially, brand advocates.

Together, technology and CSR are powerful tools that can generate deeper loyalty and engagement. For example, a retailer might use an online platform to make it easy for loyalty customers to give any unused rewards, such as miles and points, to causes that matter to them.

When retailers follow their customers’ charitable lead, they forge more meaningful relationships with them, driving ROI and a loyalty bond that endures for the long haul.

Gerrit McGowan is CEO of KULA Causes

Guest Blog by Steven Kramer, North America President of hybris, www.hybris.com 

Last month, I wrote about five key considerations to keep in mind when evaluating merchandizing tools and your initiatives (http://blog.retail-merchandiser.com/?p=211).  This post will expand on that and discuss four additional points to consider to help you drive success with your merchandizing efforts.

1. In search, context is king

The context of a consumer’s search is as important as the search itself. Here are a few questions you may want your tool to find the answers for and then weave them into the execution of merchandizing rules. Do you know this customer? What did he/she buy in the past? What do you know about the customer’s current session? Have they logged in with a Facebook account and provided me with access to what they like? Or what have they pinned on their Pinterest board? You may have that product in your store, and, although they haven’t searched for it explicitly, why not show it anyway? How did they interact with your business on other channels? Have they bought from your stores or via your mobile site? Can you create rules that take this effectively into account?

Can you present products depending upon a customer’s location? Can you factor in real-time stock levels?  Successfully blending product, order, customer and stock level information with the real-time context of the customer allows for very powerful merchandizing.

2. Promotions are more than just displaying a banner

Displaying a promotion is often more complex than just showing a banner.  It depends on a customer’s context as well as the context of the page or the navigation, and economical aspects play a role, too. Some of these factors have to be evaluated in real-time. For example, a promotion may be limited in how many customers can use it. You don’t want to show a promotion to your customer first, only to tell them later that they are no longer entitled to it.

3. Can you re-use your merchandizing tool across customer touch points?

By design each customer touch point has different characteristics, which merchandizers have to cater to. Although the goal is fundamentally still the same (getting the right product at the right time in front of the customer) the way to achieve it is different. What works very well via one touch point may not work so well through another.  For example, on a website it’s perfectly acceptable to have a search & navigation bar, show cross- and up-sell products, and have many filters and sometimes long lists of products. Research, though, has shown that customers rarely use their mobile phones in the same way that they use browsers on a notebook or desktop. In fact they often have the clear intent to find the one product they are standing in front of.  So the journey would probably not start with browsing, and the intent would most likely be to find a specific product very quickly. As a result merchandizing needs to happen on the product detail page, but in a way that does not distract the customer from the product they have already expressed interest in. Additionally, the tool set should support the merchandizing of accessories or similar alternatives in the space available.

Merchandizing tools that work across touch points can also be used to support customer service or sales personnel in-store. Tablets that provide access to content fed by the merchandizing tool can help salespeople stay educated, which leads to more effective and insightful interactions with customers, thus increasing the likelihood of sales.

4. Does your merchandizing tool play well with others?

As in the physical world, merchandizing is a team sport in the virtual world. Various tools have to work together to provide that great customer experience and bring out the products your customers love and are profitable for you. On any typical state-of-the-art commerce site, you’ll find a zoo of tools that have to be working together. Web Content Management, Recommendation Engines, Search & Navigation, Product Content, Behavioral targeting engines, Review Engines and many more. Some may have overlapping functionality; some may claim they can do it all. The reality, though, is that they all have their individual strengths. If orchestrated in the right way they can really make your revenue explode, but the opposite is true, too. So it’s important to merchandisers that they have a centralized view on all these tools and get a good and precise understanding of how they affect a customer’s journey, so these tools do good and not harm.

In Closing

Merchandizing is a team sport. So when selecting your tool set, think about how your perfect team looks so that it can deliver the trophies you deserve.  And be sure to feed your tool with quality content and leverage the tool across customer touch points for the most impactful merchandizing results.

Steven Kramer is North America President of hybris, www.hybris.com