OMNI-CHANNEL
STRATEGY
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full potential,
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including their ability to help consumers purchase anywhere and
anytime, in support of an effective, seamless experience.
EXAMPLE: WALMART (USA/GLOBAL)
Walmart sells more than 67 million items in its stores and online.
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Yet its online portfolio of
approximately 19 million items is dwarfed by the 365 million items available on Amazon.
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Still, even as same-store sales have fallen flat, Walmart has achieved
a significant boost in its
e-commerce sales,
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prompting the retail giant to embrace its omni-channel future—and com-
pete even harder against Amazon—through several notable moves. It acquired an Amazon
competitor, Jet.com.
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It introduced a scan-and-go app that allows consumers to scan items
as they place them in physical shopping carts, provide a mobile payment, and then simply
show their receipts as they exit the store.
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To enhance the synergy
between in-store and
online shopping, Walmart requires its suppliers to deal with a single buyer, responsible for
making purchase decisions for both e-commerce and in-store merchandise. Anticipating dras-
tic changes to the overall shopping environment in the next few decades,
Walmart aims to
allow its mobile site to evolve into a personal shopping assistant that helps consumers make
informed choices, wherever they might be.
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Then the brick-and-mortar stores can emerge
as desirable, go-to locations, attracting shoppers by featuring compelling experience goods,
such as restaurants,
hair salons, healthcare services, demonstrations, and sampling. Taking the
omni-channel even further, Walmart seeks to integrate consumers into the supply chain, by
encouraging them to create original content and serve as beneficial influencers. Accordingly,
Walmart’s omni-channel strategy highlights the ongoing need
to develop better consumer
analytics, especially those that can attribute sales to specific channels.
For both types of retailers, a key question revolves around whether they should
target the same customer base, both online and offline. Brick-and-mortar retail-
ers can overcome their shelf space and
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