A Year-End Look at Retail - Page 2
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CRM
CRM has also existed for many years in various forms. But what made 2004 an important CRM year is that CRM played a critical behind-the-scenes role in several of the years other key technologies. Many of the more state-of-the-art POS approaches—including contactless—were based on gathering more data for CRM. As consumers continue abandoning greenbacks and checks for electronic payment options, the ability to gather, analyze and use tons of new data points puts CRM front and center. But its not definite that CRM is being used in the way intended, especially in the retail space. Do retailers want to merely better understand what people buy, or do they want to identify what specific customers buy, so they can be individually marketed, through e-mail, snail-mail or even custom messages zapped to their cell phones or PDAs? Heres a short list of stories on how CRM influenced the retail scene:Epiphanys New CRM Apps Offer Instant Analysis
Is Corporate Hoarding The CRM Goodies?
Will Frustrated Store Managers Revolt Against Corporate CRM?
Albertsons Learns The Legal Dangers Of CRM
How Intimate a CRM Relationship Do Your Customers Really Want?
Retail CRM: Does Data Create a Duty?
E-COMMERCE
During the first several years of e-commerce—say, from about 1994 through 2001— we experienced a technology in its infancy. After that, the initial rivalries (physical store executives protecting their turf from the online invaders) started to shrink as the economy bottomed out and the United States was attacked and went to war. The economy didnt truly show evidence of a strong recovery until early 2004, so thats when e-commerce started to get real again. This time, though, the technology and the business models had matured, and consumers and corporate buyers had gotten entirely comfortable with Web purchases. So 2004 was the first full year when we met the grownup (OK, older adolescent) e-commerce. The ability to cleanly perform e-commerce tricks—such as buying online and then picking up in-store—had been well-rehearsed, and few major retailers today cant do it in some form. But even online leader Best Buy stumbled, succeeding with the terribly difficult integration and programming challenges but dropping the ball with the elementary communication tasks.
Heres a short list of stories on how e-commerce influenced the retail scene:
Keeping Seasonal Help Away From Customers
Abandoned Shopping Carts May Be Good News
Staples Automates Refunds
Next-Gen Kiosks For the Holidays
Study: Holiday Online Sales to Jump 20 Percent
A Tailor-Made Technology Environment
Best Buy Learns That Great Technology Is Little Help If Employees Dont Know About It
Bringing Storefront Perks to Web Sales
Aberdeen Report: True Multichannel Sales Rare
Drawing The E-Commerce Battle Lines
Site Helps Retailers Tout Local Deals
Tracking Service Aims to Ease Product Returns
Pity The Retail IT Pioneer
A Lesson From Toys Were Us
Next Page: POS.
CRM has also existed for many years in various forms. But what made 2004 an important CRM year is that CRM played a critical behind-the-scenes role in several of the years other key technologies. Many of the more state-of-the-art POS approaches—including contactless—were based on gathering more data for CRM. As consumers continue abandoning greenbacks and checks for electronic payment options, the ability to gather, analyze and use tons of new data points puts CRM front and center. But its not definite that CRM is being used in the way intended, especially in the retail space. Do retailers want to merely better understand what people buy, or do they want to identify what specific customers buy, so they can be individually marketed, through e-mail, snail-mail or even custom messages zapped to their cell phones or PDAs? Heres a short list of stories on how CRM influenced the retail scene:
During the first several years of e-commerce—say, from about 1994 through 2001— we experienced a technology in its infancy. After that, the initial rivalries (physical store executives protecting their turf from the online invaders) started to shrink as the economy bottomed out and the United States was attacked and went to war. The economy didnt truly show evidence of a strong recovery until early 2004, so thats when e-commerce started to get real again. This time, though, the technology and the business models had matured, and consumers and corporate buyers had gotten entirely comfortable with Web purchases. So 2004 was the first full year when we met the grownup (OK, older adolescent) e-commerce. The ability to cleanly perform e-commerce tricks—such as buying online and then picking up in-store—had been well-rehearsed, and few major retailers today cant do it in some form. But even online leader Best Buy stumbled, succeeding with the terribly difficult integration and programming challenges but dropping the ball with the elementary communication tasks.
Next Page: POS.
