Retail by MarketScale

It's that time of the year when the retail industry gets put under the microscope. Shopping malls are bustling and online marketplaces are full of shoppers. Technology is pushing the customer experience forward like never before. On this week's episode of the MarketScale Retail podcast, we took a look at some of the big trends of 2018 and what might be coming down the road in 2019.

It's the time of year when retail gets brought into the forefront of the national consciousness. Today's episode of the MarketScale Retail Podcast tackles some of the big issues facing the industry: returns, diversification, and employee management.

Three thought leaders from the industry join this week's episode to share their expertise on these topics.

There is a tendency to only remember the negative side of our struggles in both business and life. The fact is, there are just as many positives we can learn from during those same struggles. Today, MarketScale Host Sean Heath had an opportunity to speak with Jackie Werblo, Head Coach at CONVEX Leadership. Jackie shared the dramatic story of someone who had a career disappointment that almost destroyed her. They discussed the benefits of struggle, choosing to grow from the challenges, and how you can give yourself permission to bounce forward to success. (Also, Sean found another excuse to eat an entire box of donuts.)

"We all know people who are a bit of 'woe is me.' And then we know people who, every time you ask them how they are, they will say they are "fantastic,'" Werblo said. "That person who says 'fantastic' may have an inner voice saying 'ehhh, maybe not today,' but they are going to say they're 'fantastic,' because they know if they believe it, good things will happen to them."

Finding your place in the retail industry is an important part of carving out an identity and charting a path for success. That can mean finding the correct location for a physical building, or carving out a piece of the market alongside heavy hitters like Amazon. On this week's episode of the MarketScale Retail Podcast, we're going to talk to two people who are experts in helping retailers find their space, both in a physical and technological sense.

In an industry as dynamic as digital marketing, it's important to stay up-to-date with industry tools and trends. As an educator, Dr. Yuping Liu-Thompkins must find ways to prepare students to enter the workforce with skills that will be valuable in 15 to 20 years.

"Technology adoption has been so saturated...a lot of people are using multiple devices," Liu-Thompkins, a professor of marketing and Director of the Customer Analytics and Strategy Collaboratory at Old Dominion University, said. "There's an increase in need for marketers to understand that behavior. Adaptability is a really important skillset for students these days."

In this episode of the Digital Marketing Professor Series, Liu-Thompkins discussed how her research on customer loyalty and branding informs her teaching.

Liu-Thompkins recently co-authored an article on loyalty programs and how changing expiration policies affect consumer behavior. Companies are starting to see a financial liability in unlimited rewards programs where points never expire and are now introducing expiration dates in dramatic fashion. Some companies are even going to a 36-month period or a monthly expiration rate.

Her results of her research were unexpected; consumers were incentivized to focus their purchases at certain brands and stores, and in turn they became more loyal.

"They eventually become the single loyal instead of what we call polygamous loyal customer. They turn it into a single loyal customer to the store in order to make their points work in their favor," Liu-Thompkins said.

On the podcast, Liu-Thompkins also broke down the power that the influencer is having on marketing. As audiences seek more authenticity in the way brands connect with them, micro-influencers have become an attractive vehicle for advertisers.

"If you can rightly engage your customers in the social media space, you’re doing something good, you’ll make your customer wanting to talk about it, that already creates a level of sharing and re-sharing through their social networks and creating the influencer you are needing," Liu-Thompkins said.

On today's episode of the MarketScale Retail Show, we're looking at Black Friday 2018. Things have changed over the last few years in Retail, and Black Friday hasn't been left out. With industry giants like Amazon overtaking e-commerce, consumers have found year-round ways to save money. With Black Friday losing it's intrigue, what is a shopper looking for, and how should brick-and-mortar stores attract customers into their stores? We have all that in more, with two features from branding experts in Retail; Jennifer Ruscin, CEO and Owner of Jennifer Kaylo Ruscin Enterprises, explains best practices for staying profitable in a season that demands deals, and Stephenie Sullivan, Owner of Sully Consult, helps us define the Black Friday shopper of today, and what it will take to get them engaged.

Could data analysis replace intuition and creativity as the next best skill for tomorrow’s digital marketers? All signs are pointing in that direction, or at least towards a fusion of data and content. Especially within the Retail industry, with consumer trends flowing from in-store, in-app, or online, retailers have an abundance of data to make sense of and capitalize on, data that can influence powerful marketing strategies. Dr. Axel Stock, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Central Florida, joins us on this episode of our Digital Marketing Professor Series, to add his decades of experience to the conversation.

Dr. Stock has found that, as company structures evolve, so do their marketing strategies. Information is more available to everybody on the commercial level; the entry-point for understanding the statistical growth and trends of your company. Data and analysis are becoming a prerequisite for marketing students looking to enter a changing landscape, who now take courses on programming language. The consumer is evolving too; they're more savvy and aware of the best deals, and are looking for marketing that is less distracting and disruptive, according to Stock. All in all, traditional marketing is seeing a statistical and content-focused swing.

“Decisions at the higher levels of the organization will be driven more by scientists, increasingly,” Dr. Stock said. “Currently in those more academic areas within organizations, where you would have positions that were traditionally marketing people, now you have physicists and engineers because they have more background in programming. Since these large sets of data need a particular skill first to collect them and analyze them, the traditional marketing graduate would not be able to do that.”