Today, consumers are no longer shopping in a single channel. The consumer today like to shopping cross different channel, and willing to seamlessly move between different channel base on preferences, time, location and other elements. It is showing consumers today expect to have consistent and integrated services and experience across different channels. [1]
To meet the consumer’s expect, provide better service and engage more new customers is the main subjects for the business today. To satisfy consumers’ expect of having integrated services and experience across different channels, and create a competitive advantage in the market, a new form of marketing --- Omnichannel marketing has been invited.
First, what is the omnichannel marketing strategy?
An Omnichannel marketing strategy is to integrate all marketing channel, to provide a seamless experience for the consumer when they are shopping across different sales and services platform of a company. And here is a video that introduced the omnichannel marketing.
The research has shown that in the next ten years omnichannel will gradually become the new normal. So in 2030, all retailers must have applied some degree of omnichannel marketing strategy, to make sure they are still competitive in the market. [2] And today there already have some company well applied the omnichannel marketing, and has effectively engaged consumers; they can be an example of how other service and retail companies will look like in 2030.
1) Starbucks - Food-service industry
Starbucks has developed a mobile application for its customers, and the app is available to be downloaded at the Starbucks official website. The Starbucks application has integrated with the Starbucks website, the Starbucks physical store, and the Starbucks database. The consumer can use the Starbucks app to pay for their order in the physical store, and able to add money to their Starbucks account in real time through the app. The consumer also can check how many points they have for their Starbucks loyalty program, and the app will also remind consumer when and where will have Starbucks promotion activity.
2) Apple - Retail industry
Similar to Starbucks, Apple has made a phone application for consumers that available on the app store . The consumer can place the order on the app, and use the apple mobile app to pick up the order in the physical store. The customer can also use the mobile app to make an appointment with a support representative in the Apple store, and the mobile app will also notice consumer when a representative is ready to help them.
3) Disneyland - Entertainment industry
Like two other examples, Disneyland has also provided a mobile app for their customers and free to download at Disneyland website. Customers can use the mobile app to plan their coming trip to the park before they arrived. When the customer arrived at the park they can use the app to upgrade their ticket to fast pass ticket, and can use the app to check the approximate waiting time for all the attractions, also can locate and navigate to the attractions.
What can industry implement today that can provide a high-efficiency omnichannel system for the company in 2030?
To implement the omnichannel marketing strategies and serve consumers that were shopping across the different channels, all channels inside of the company need to have the availability for all real-time information about customers and achieving the goal of all channels have availability of all real-time data the company can use some information technology [3] . Usually, each company will develop its back-office system that supports the delivery of data from one channel to all other channels but may have low efficiency. But if the company want to increase the efficiency further, the customer relationship management (CRM) system will be a perfect choice. The CRM system is an information system that tracks all communication between the customer and the company and centralize all consumer data to a CRM data warehouse, and allow all channels of the company have access to CRM data [4] .And here is a video that give detail for CRM.
What should the company be aware of when developing an information system?
A good information system like CRM system to integrate all existing systems will help the company further increase the efficiency of the omnichannel marketing system. But the implementation of the new information system usually has several pitfalls.
Pitfalls 1: High cost for developing a new IS system
For the small company, if the company want to have a new IS a system that best fits the company, they need to pay the professional IT company to customise the IS system, and that usually have a very high price, which small company may not be afforded.
For the large company, based on the research, on average, large IT projects run 45 percent above the budget. [5]
Pitfalls 2: Relatively high rate of failure to implement a new information system.
Research shows that around 3 out of 10 major information system implementation failed.
The failure to implement a new IS system may cause the website and mobile app and other existed system crash, and the additional consequence like system crash will damage the benefit of the company. For example, Nestlé and Nike has lost goodwill, lost investment opportunities, damaged brand because of the addition consequence from the failed IS project .[6]
What should not the company do to protect consumers' right when conducting the omnichannel marketing?
Gathering customer's data like real-time customer location or shopping preference is the main way the company use to understand the customer better and is the way to develop more customised service for the consumer. But the company should not gather privacy data like real-time location and home address from the consumer without permission from the customer, or hand over customer privacy data to the third party without the consent from the consumer, since both actions will damage consumers right in both legal perspective and moral perspective.
Overall. To remain competitive in the market, companies in the retail and service industry should begin to planning and implementing the new IS system to develop their omnichannel marketing from today, and acquire high-efficiency omnichannel marketing in 2030.
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