Remember those ads a few years ago describing the little-known affliction called restless leg syndrome?  Few of us had ever heard of the disorder but to listen to the ads, one was prone to believe it was an epidemic.  Who, after all, doesn’t experience the odd bad night’s sleep or a little restlessness.  And, given that just before we wake up, we’re… well… asleep, it wasn’t hard for pharmaceutical marketers and the media to convince us that while in that sleep we were literally doing the Harlem Shake!  Yup! Restless leg syndrome was apparently keeping us all up at night!

But in fact, according to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, only approximately 5 percent of the general population may genuinely suffer from restless leg syndrome to the extent that it affects sleep.  Hardly an epidemic when compared to dozens of other more widespread and serious conditions.

 “Showrooming” has become a little like restless leg syndrome.

It too is a condition that’s difficult to prove and yet very easy to believe you’re afflicted with – especially when marketers and the media keep telling you you are.  Not only have retailers like Best Buy and Walmart come to blame much of their woes on showrooming, there are also loads of technology, marketing and media companies out there right now thriving on perpetuating the belief that showrooming is the very source of those sales woes! Showrooming has become a catalyst for a whole new range of omni-channel support, systems and services.  Showrooming is big business.

The facts about showrooming however, tell a different story.

A recent and relatively robust survey from Bizrate of 9,000 shoppers who had just consummated an online purchase, concluded that even among the relatively small percentage of shoppers who actually showroom (almost 80% do not), the majority end up buying from that same retailer’s online store – not from a competitor, as we are often led to believe.

Now, does this mean that consumers aren’t making better use of the data at their disposal via mobile devices?  Certainly not.  Plenty of studies have confirmed the growing influence of mobile on pre-purchase and in-purchase behavior.  And that’s only likely to continue. What it does suggest however, is that just like restless leg syndrome isn’t the likely cause of most lost sleep, showrooming isn’t the cause of most lost sales – not yet anyway.

So what’s the real problem?

From my point of view, it’s that we live in a world of one-click convenience and no one really needs what you sell anymore.  They do however, need why and how you sell it.  But if your store isn’t substantially differentiated or remarkable enough to hold a distinct and powerful position in the consumer’s mind and win their love and loyalty, you’re going to lose sales to online players every day.  Not because consumers are sneaky. Not because showrooming is rampant.  And not because technology is evil.  But because your business and the shopper experience you’ve offered simply aren’t compelling enough to command the sale. 

So don’t be taken in to believing that you’re being afflicted by some new, obscure condition.  And don’t look for a pill to miraculously cure you.  There isn’t one I’m afraid.  Instead, go back to the drawing board and ask “What does my business offer the world that it can’t get elsewhere?”  If you can’t come up with an exceptionally good answer, showrooming isn’t your real problem at all.

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Over the last holiday shopping season, Amazon was clocking in 306 transactions per second!  Photo app Instagram achieved a market value of 1 billion dollars in two years with a mere twelve employees.  90% of the data that exists right now was created in the last two years and it’s estimated that soon, that world’s store of data could begin doubling every few hours. Just about everywhere we look we see more evidence that change is happening on an absolutely exponential scale.

Some of this velocity and veracity of change is a consequence of huge leaps in technology and the increasing connectedness of people and things.  And given the rate of the planet’s population growth, some is just sheer math.  Whatever the reason, change is no longer safe and incremental as it once was.  It’s volatile, risky and rapid.

But how many meetings did you have at your company in the last month (or year for that matter) where the ideas being shared were so far flung they made you really uneasy?  How many product or service innovations came forward that were so radical that they worried you a little?  How many failures were publicly celebrated by management for having moved the organization forward in its thinking?

I speak to so many companies who claim innovation as their dominant competency and yet when I delve deeper into the construct and culture of most, I often find that in fact, risk aversion is what’s really being rewarded.  Completion, compliance and complicity are what get people ahead. And there’s no rocking the boat or running with scissors allowed.

“If an idea doesn’t make you feel a little uneasy, chances are it’s not really all that innovative.”

 

I’m also surprised at the number of companies that benchmark innovation vertically within their category or industry and fail to look outside to see the amazing things going on.  The problem with this, as I’ve called out before, is that increasingly the real competition in the market isn’t your direct competitors but someone from outside who imagines a better way of doing what you do and builds it from scratch.  With ever lowering barriers to entry, these outsiders can be far more dangerous than any known competitor.  So, fixating on what your direct competitors are doing won’t inspire innovation, only stifle it.

The net effect of these conditions for most organizations is incremental and almost imperceptible levels of change. Safe, subtle and linear – that’s “change” in most organizations. And that is precisely why most organizations simply won’t make it in the new era of consumerism. 

I look at it this way…if the change happening outside your company is far more unsettling than the change happening inside it, you’re not innovating at all.  You’re being left behind.

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By Doug Stephens

If the web is the gasoline fuelling a new era of retail, then mobile is the flame that is set to completely ignite it! Not only is mobile accelerating age-old consumer behaviors and patterns, it’s also creating completely new ones.  In all the disruption, the question on everyone’s mind is, in a world of one-click satisfaction, is there a place for brick and mortar retail?  And if so, what does the store of the future look like?

I had a chance recently to speak to GigaOM’s Adam Lesser and IMMR Research’s Dr. Phil Hendrix about this new era of retailing and what we can expect going forward.  It was a tremendously enjoyable conversation, and you can listen to it HERE.

Learn more about having Doug to speak at your next meeting or conference here

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By Doug Stephens

There’s a dramatic and strangely under-editorialized reality taking shape in retail.  One that seems to be eluding even some of the industry’s most sophisticated retailers and brands.

It’s that until very recently the primary function, form and purpose of retail stores was to distribute products. Stores were the principle and in many cases the only means of availing distribution of products to a given market.

Consequently, the entire retail industry framework has been based on product sales from the store to the consumer, and the revenue it generates.  Markets are planned by projecting store sales, retail leases are often based on store sales, and a retailer’s health and success is measured by tracking it on a same-store sales basis. Indeed, almost all in-store metrics of performance are based on sales (per square foot, per hour, per sales associate and so on)  It’s all about the sale of product.

And therein lies a problem.

In a post-Internet, post-mobile world of one click access, the distribution of products has all but ceased to be the issue. When one of something can be efficiently shipped to anyone, anywhere, the question of where the sale takes place is rapidly becoming moot.  In other words, in the long-term, sales of product simply can’t be the primary strategic purpose or metric for the store.

Some of the world’s largest retailers are struggling with this jarring reality already. “Stack it high and watch it fly” has abruptly turned into “stack it low and hope it goes” as big box stores scramble to lower inventories in the face of flat or declining sales.  The knee-jerk reaction among some is to simply downsize and marginalize the role of the store.  Others are adopting the buzzword of omni-channel – resigning to the idea that all channels now act as one – which I would argue risks oversimplifying what’s really happening.

You see, what’s actually evolving is a new and far more complex role for the store, and online brands like Google, Bonobos and Warby Parker are affirming it, as they each embark on creating their own, branded, physical stores.  They along with a growing number of other online pure-plays recognize that in order to “fully actualize” their brands, they need to animate a physical presence and visceral experience for their consumers, not to move products but more critically, to move hearts and minds – to sell the idea, essence and values of the brand  – all of which has more traditionally been viewed as the role of media.  Which brings us to a critical point.

The physical store is becoming media.

What used to be a distribution channel is becoming a media channel and likewise, media channels (television, magazines, radio, print advertising, social media etc.) are increasingly becoming the “store”.  Virtual storefronts are cropping up in all forms of media. It’s entirely possible to buy products from a tweet, a Facebook post, a video or TV show.  And each day, new integrations and applications are allowing us to buy, in a friction-free way, directly from media formats. Media is no longer merely a benign messaging vehicle but also an instant distribution channel.  We need no longer rely on driving consumers to “the store” when we can now drive the store to the consumer – wherever and whenever they need that store to be.

So increasingly, the primary role of the store will not be to sell product but rather to deliver the most powerful, and emotionally galvanizing experience possible, to create an essential level brand affinity, trust and allegiance – none of which necessarily results in immediate, or location-specific revenue recognition.

It’s not that stores won’t sell products…

Of course, many will.  But unlike today, where retail is a product-first, experience-second business, the reverse will increasingly be true.  Product sales will simply ride on the back of remarkable experiences.  Consequently, sales in general will steadily become a less meaningful or accurate measure of true store contribution and productivity.  On the flip-side, media, which has always gotten away with using nebulous metrics, will now be held to entirely new standards for generating immediate, measurable sales – not merely impressions, “eyeballs” or awareness.

So, the binary debate over which channels are winning and which are losing should come to an end.  The fact is, all retail – online and offline – is becoming phy-gital.  The physical store is becoming a powerful media channel and increasingly all forms of media  are becoming the store.  The result must be nothing other than a revolution in the way we plan, build, lease, measure and analyze the value of retail stores.

The store as we’ve known it, is being reinvented.

Book Doug to speak at your meeting or conference by clicking here.

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