Omnichannel

The differences in organizational structure — including how employees are compensated — between retail companies were discussed by a panel at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City this week. The panel included Brad Brown, senior vice president of e-commerce and direct sales at Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI); Ivy Chin, senior vice president of e-commerce at Belk; Jeffrey Liss, senior vice president and general manager, e-commerce and CRM at Charming Shoppes; and Jim Okamura, managing partner, Okamura Consulting.

In his keynote presentation yesterday at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City, Tim Belk, chairman and CEO of Belk, spoke of the company's transition from a department store chain in the Southeast into an omnichannel business that's growing beyond its 16-state store footprint.

If you enter a Walgreens and it looks more like an upscale sushi bar or a grocery store than a pharmacy, that's OK with Chief Executive Gregory Wasson. It's actually by design and part of the "Well Experience" concept that will be rolled out in more Walgreens stores this year as the company pushes further beyond the traditional look of a drugstore with a pharmacy counter in back to a variety of looks that also emphasize fresh food, beauty supplies and an array of private-label products. 

When specialty retailer Cache hired Kevin Metz as its first vice president of e-commerce last year, his mandate was clear: connect the store and online experiences. Metz, who previously worked for Yankee Candle, Limited Too and Bass Pro Shops, got to work on the Cache website to make it easy for its customers, who mostly research online and come in-store to purchase, to check to see if a product is available at the Cache store closest to them. 

The sign of a great brand isn't only name recognition, but the image you get in your head when you hear the name. You should immediately feel something when the name is mentioned. The best brands allow you to see something as well. Distinct visual images should pop into your head at the mere mention of the name. Crate & Barrel, Dean & DeLuca and Williams-Sonoma are masters at this — three very recognizable names, each with a distinct brand positioning and an identifiable visual aesthetic. Because they're so good at what they do, it made it difficult to find weaknesses in their execution, but there are some. Let's take a close look to see how these three popular brands deliver across multiple sales channels.

Good news all around in both the online and offline retail worlds. With these kinds of statistics, retailers have a lot to be optimistic about in 2013. To give you a little help to ensure your 2013 is the best it can be, check out our cover story, where you'll find our second annual how-to guide to being a successful cross-channel retailer. We've assembled a top-notch group of cross-channel retail experts to offer you their best advice for the year ahead on a variety of topics, from warehouse labor management to mobile marketing to best practices for integrating social media into your marketing mix.

Nearly three out of four (72 percent) consumers aged 20-40 in the United States and the United Kingdom use mobile devices while in-store to compare prices, but the majority leave before making a purchase, according to a study by Accenture Interactive. The research also shows that while consumers in this age group are concerned about online privacy, they will permit retailers to track their shopping behavior to personalize their shopping experience.

The Seattle Times exposed the problem of payment holds for Amazon.com sellers in an article published over the weekend. But Amazon sellers in the U.K. were struggling with "payment holds" of a different kind last week. The U.K. sellers became nervous on Wednesday when there was no sign of disbursements into their bank accounts. Sellers said they received mixed messages from Amazon's customer service reps and fretted about when they would receive their weekly disbursement. Several of the sellers affected said they were unable to buy new inventory until the funds made it into their accounts.

As e-commerce grows in popularity, brick-and-mortar retailers are finding themselves losing more and more sales to online outlets like Amazon.com. But how are some of the most successful brick-and-mortar retailers holding their own against online retail?

This week's top article of the week (as determined by our readers’ clickthroughs) deals with a topic that seems cross-channel retailers, and specifically those that mail print catalogs, have been struggling with for years: attributing orders back to the marketing channel that drove the sale. Catalog marketing and circulation consultant Jim Coogan attempts to shine some light on this murky topic in Multichannel Attribution and Today's Catalog Circulation Issues, where he lays out what marketers need to consider when developing and analyzing an integrated contact strategy.