Retail by MarketScale

In the past, if you went to a brick-and-mortar store, you did so to shop, and the store responded as such. You walked in, asked questions, made a purchase, and went about your business. The market has really changed, as has the competition, and this has created a huge change in the way that brands are interacting with their consumers. It’s now not as much about the products as it is about the experience.

We’re here today with Eric Thompson, Senior Sales Executive with Bluewater, and we’re talking about how retailers and brands are threading technology throughout their in-store experience.
Thompson has worked with 8 of the 10 top retailers in his 25+ year career, so he’s filling us in on what stores are doing to compete in a “retail apocalypse” where stores are closing left and right, and 30 have filed bankruptcy.

Thompson says retail isn’t dead, but it’s certainly changing, and it’s become a hot-button issue over the last 2 years. “Obviously the online experience is something that’s big and is not going away and it’s close to about what ten percent of retail sales are, and there are still people that want to go to the store and want to shop in the stores but they want more of a frictionless experience.” He points out that people don’t want to be waiting in a checkout line, so Amazon Go was created to let people walk in and out. Sam’s Club recently unveiled a store where you can create a shopping list and it will provide a digital roadmap telling you exactly where to go to get your items. “It’s really just about being efficient and having a good experience.”

And while more digital items are being woven into the retail experience now, Thompson warns that it’s still important to know who your customer base is. “If you’re catering more toward the Gen Z or millennials, they’re digitally native so they want to have those digital attributes in the store. Maybe if it’s a store that caters to the Baby Boom generation, there are ways to weave technology into the stores without being too tech-heavy. You have to use technology kind of towards who your customers are.”

For more information on creating a digital shopping experience, including notes on self-pay, geofencing, online research, AI, and interactive touch screens, and what all of this means to the consumer, you’ll want to immerse yourself into the rest of this podcast.

In the digital age, advertising and marketing has pulled away from TV and embraced more experiential and cross-platform content. As consumer media habits change, advertising and marketing methods must adapt, and with today’s 24/7 content expectations, the end result has to reach the consumer authentically and at all times.

Cedric Lourie, Director of Digital Development for FreedomPay, follows how digital media continues to develop creative methods of advertising and, on the podcast, he unpacks what is worrying marketers in today's content-driven climate.

Lourie calls digital media “the norm,” and said that in today’s world if a business does not go digital through outlets like social media, then that business will be left behind. The potential obstacles faced by businesses include privacy concerns and advertising fraud, among others, but the hardest to avoid is changing consumer habits. That piece of the puzzle directly impacts where marketers aim their content to. All of these, Lourie has seen, have kept companies' messages from getting to their intended targets.

“Dollars lost due to fraud were near $16 billion in the U.S. alone, which is just second to the drug trade,” Lourie stated.

Consumer expectations are also high. They want personal experiences, and since everyone is different, this means advertising needs to become more customized. Lourie points out how brands that can ingrain a feeling of personalization have become most successful.

One tool alleviating the pain point of trying to reach customers everywhere in an authentic way is FreedomPay’s Decision Point Network, a point-of-sale software that can help businesses reach multiple consumers effectively and up-sell in a way that doesn't turn the customer off to their retail experience. Lourie dives deep on the podcast to explain how the software is opening new doors to the customer, and what effect these subtle content pushes have on the brick and mortar experience.

Starting a retail business can feel like walking through fog. There are the essentials, like aesthetics, products and location, but even then retailers often don't realize the extensive testing that goes into maximizing branding, marketing, and even pricing.

On the first episode of Dialed In, we sit down with the CEO of MarketDial, Morgan Davis, a self-described “reformed country boy," who explains how to identify the most crucial points for brick and mortar stores to achieve better results.

According to Davis, “Most good retailers tend to be alike,” and the top businesses tend to always be innovation-driven and customer-focused. But even those businesses struggle, and when they do, the right actionable decision isn't always so clear. Where does MarketDial come in? Retailers have more transactional data than they’ve ever had before, and not only do they have information about what customers are purchasing, but they have info about customers themselves, their income, likes and dislikes, and shopping behavior. Davis is able to take that information and figure out ways to create A/B testing experiments that test X, Y, and Z products and marketing strategies.

Businesses may have ideas about competing priorities, innovative ideas, or a marketing team whose job is to come up with new ways to communicate value to their customers, but they may not know which of these ideas is going to be the most successful. Often, they may end up investing in the wrong path, or splitting their funds between several ideas when they could have gone with one full throttle.

"We’re able to test new products, different displays, a different pricing structure, etc., and that testing culture allows us to drive business through rigorous testing by knowing which ideas will be more impactful," Davis said.

Sometimes we do testing and “15 percent of the changes recommended were a disaster”, and to Davis, that’s a win because “success to us is not every test working perfectly, it’s finding out what does work and doesn’t and learning from those to improve your business model.”

Retailers big and small are trying to determine how to best reach younger generations. Unfathomable amounts of ink have been spilt trying to define all of the ways that millennials are different from their predecessors. Heather Watson, behavioral designer for the Center for Generational Kinetics, LLC, joins this episode of the podcast to explain the factors that she considers when evaluating why generations behave the way that they do.

We're also joined by Kathy Thomas, Chief Strategy Officer for Half Price Books, who explains why their business continues to thrive while other traditional brick and mortar retailers have struggled.

On today’s MarketScale Retail podcast, we welcome Juan Perez, CEO of ADUSA Inc., to analyze what effective ADA compliance looks like and why businesses should take steps to make their hardware and software compliant sooner than later. Part of what keeps businesses from becoming compliant immediately, Perez explains, is due to confusing or vague laws that only apply to government agencies, contractors, or people doing businesses with those agencies.

Perez said that the "wait and see" approach won’t work; he believes "that’s not a proactive enough approach and that could have some consequences down the line.”

Consequences are already starting to pop up, as restaurants that provide self-service kiosks are already beginning to face litigation, like a case recently where a visually impaired person was unable to order due to an audio port being blocked; an unfortunate result when you consider how easy of a fix it is.

“Effective ADA compliance or accessibility is only achieved through both a marriage of both hardware and software,” Perez said. “There are certain standards already out in place that can be used so you can modify hardware with certain peripherals, and you can modify software to adhere to certain standards that would make the self-service kiosk accessible to a wide range of disabilities.”

He recommends that all existing restaurants with self-service kiosks add a tactile navigation bar with linear navigation for those who may have prosthetics, bright colored bounded box around the item that’s selected, say a hamburger, so that the person knows where they’ve landed on the screen if they’re visually impaired, as well as audio jacks so that a visually impaired person can plug in a headset. He points out that some kiosks have added a blue wheelchair button, which moves the text and graphics lower to the ground for easier reach.

The US Access Board is looking at new litigation, and these laws may soon change again. Until then, Perez said these fixes are relatively cost-effective, especially when working with companies and products like EZ Access, developed at the University of Wisconsin. These technology solutions are giving restaurants and retailers less and less of an excuse to not comply with these laws.

What is the future of the retail industry? Two things we can say with confidence is that Amazon figures to be around for a while and pro AV will continue to play a big role in the industry. This week's episode takes a look at these two items with guests Bryan Eisenberg from Buyer Legends and Brad Grimes from Avixa. 

Even though texting has become a staple of how we communicate, businesses are still scared to use it to interact with customers. They shouldn’t be, though; it’s way more powerful than any other medium out there. 95 percent of all text messages arrive within three minutes and are opened soon thereafter, but less than 20 percent of emails are even opened. Imagine that communicative power blasting customers' cell phones.

Brands are jumping on the trend of adopting recyclable plastic, but are they too late? On this week's episode of the MarketScale Retail Podcast, we spoke to Michigan State University professor Ramani Narayan about the impact that plastic waste has had on the environment up to this point and the effect that this change will have.

Reconnecting. That’s the motivation behind the history, the product and the team at Solo Stove. Starting off as a single, simple and unique cooking stove that brought the company’s founders living worlds apart back together to enjoy the childhood wonders they experienced outdoors growing up together, their mission of reconnection fuels the company’s product innovation of building simple, high quality products that reconnect their customers to what matters most in their lives. From families camping in the woods together, to backyard enthusiasts that bring warm and a place to gather ‘round on their patio, Solo Stove helps people reconnect with each other and nature while making memories that will last forever.

David Salisbury from Star Micronics discusses important factors retailers should be focusing on during this technological shift in the shopping experience. He points out that retailers must consider ways technology can help provide more knowledge about their business and ultimately guide them to more profits.

Salisbury believes multi-channel shopping keeps retailers from missing out on opportunities to sell, as an ecommerce store starts where the physical doors close. By bringing physical stores and ecommerce business together, it is not about how customers are shopping, but that they are shopping with your business. Salisbury discusses the three major factors he believes make a business––location, inventory, and staff.

He shares how technology can provide a better staff and customer experience by utilizing Star Micronics printers. These printers allow businesses to “promo print” for free, and you are able to control what prints at your store from any remote location. This allows businesses to share promotional content without training staff, ensuring each customer is receiving the message they want.