Mele’s Musings

One Big Store

Until retailers learn this lesson, they will never be truly successful in the multichannel world: “customers increasingly shop the retailers they like online and off and expect each retailer to recognize them across channels.”

Picture: lodicashregister.com

Article excerpt: The payoff in web-enabled point-of-sale: Better service for valuable customers. Many cross-channel initiatives have added features to retailers’ web sites, such as ordering online for in-store pickup or visibility into a store’s inventory. But some retailers are starting from the other end—the store—and adding Internet connectivity to their point-of-sale systems, giving employees access to the retailer’s own web site and other web-based data. Whether the retailer is a national chain like J.C. Penney Co. Inc., which has web-enabled all 35,000 of its POS terminals in nearly 1,100 stores, or a single-store merchant like Loser Kids Inc. outside of San Diego, the goal is the same: make the retailer appear to the customer as one big store, even if it sells via the web and catalogs as well as through bricks-and-mortar stores.
The rest: internetretailer.com

Musing: I love this idea that retailers are starting to train store employees on the web and give them access to their web sites and systems in the stores. Customers simply have the expectation that stores operate seamlessly online and offline – even though most really don’t. And the sad reality is that retailers don’t necessarily want to be that way, they just are because of antiquated technology and systems. What is also interesting about JCP is that they are using internet connected technologies in the store not as a substitute for customer interaction (like self-service kiosks) but as a way to enhance interactions. This is a tremendous idea, and really creates a new way of thinking about in-store technology.