Joe Keenan is senior editor of Retail Online Integration and Target Marketing Group's web-only brand, eM+C. In addition to his work on those publications, Joe has contributed articles for fellow Target Marketing Group publications Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines. Previously, he served as senior editor at Reed Technology & Information Services for five years. Retail Rants & Raves covers the wide spectrum of retail marketing, from the very best it has to offer to the very worst.
Hi folks. I am back. After a two year hiatus I am reenergized and writing again. I've used my time...
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Your homepage — as much as you love it — is basically a glorified street sign. Consumers don't read it...
In today's dynamic retail environment, however, the ability to embrace rapid process change is more important than ever. Merchandise and...
Just about every day, a shipper asks me what FedEx or UPS incentive they should be achieving for their specific...
It's official: J.C. Penney scrapped its every-day-low-price strategy for the rollercoaster world of markups and markdowns. Merchants, marketers and graphic artists...
In the final installment of this three-part series (make sure to check out parts one and two), I examine why it...
Perhaps I've been watching too much of "The Walking Dead" or maybe too many episodes of "Doomsday Preppers," but my paranoia about the...
Can you up the ante on any of your products’ amusement factors? Is there some ho-hum aspect of your product...
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Having spent last week at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago, I came away with three key takeaways: One, if you're an online retailer not selling internationally, particularly in Australia, what are you waiting for? You're missing out on a potential growth opportunity for your brand. Two, brick-and mortar retailers must develop a strategy to deal with "showrooming," — i.e., consumers using stores as showrooms to check out products, then buying those products online at a lower price (with free shipping, of course). Three, online marketplaces are proliferating — it's not just Amazon.com and eBay anymore — and becoming another viable channel for retailers to engage consumers and sell their products.
What's driving these trends, particularly showrooming, is the growth of mobile shopping. More consumers than ever are carrying a smartphone with them wherever they go, including shopping. Stories of brick-and-mortar retailers losing sales to consumers who use their smartphones in-store to find the products they're looking for at a lower price offered somewhere else were commonplace at IRCE. This isn't news to anyone, I'm sure, but mobile is going to continue to have a bigger impact on your business going forward.
Here are some more thoughts now that IRCE has come and gone:
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