Cyber Monday – first Monday of December again

I had a little side bet going and it looks like I will be ‘in pocket’…

Monday 7th December appears to have been this years Cyber Monday (Mega Monday in the US) – I will watch out for data to back this up and report ASAP

A win for multi-channel retailers in postal strike

It looks like the benefit for customers of ordering online for collection from the store has paid dividends for at least one (and probably more) UK multi-channel retailer.

Argos has reported that customers have taken advantage of the Check & Reserve service to beat the recent postal strike, and my guess is this already popular proposition will see a sustained boost in demand even after the strikes…

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Argos Press Release:

Argos Statistics Show Significant Growth In Multi-Channel Customers Over The Recent Postal Strike Period

Nov 30, 2009 10:29 CET

Today’s UK consumer has the resources and technical knowledge to cope with postal delivery issues.

Argos has revealed today that the volume of customers using their online Check & Reserve service was up almost 100% Year-on-Year (YoY) for home entertainment electrical products during the last week of the postal strikes in October.

Argos, the UK’s leading multi-channel retailer, believes this indicates that today’s UK consumer has the resources and technical knowledge to cope with postal delivery issues, that recent reports suggest have hindered pure play e-tailers. This insight follows IMRG’s e-Retail Sales Index report which states that the postal strikes adversely affected the growth of online retailer’s during the last week of October.

Argos.co.uk reservations of small consumer electrical goods such as iPods and digital photo frames more than doubled from levels recorded during the first week of October. Laptop reservations were four times higher on the same basis.

Compared to the same week last year, reservations for DAB digital radios were up over 140% YoY, DVD players increased by more than 70% YoY, with sat navs and TVs also receiving an uplift in reservations.

The statistics released by Argos also confirm that 40% of consumer electronic sales came through Check & Reserve during the previous week, covering 19-25 October 2009, which included the first two-day postal strike.

Argos pioneered the free online reservation service which has been in place since 2000. Argos customers are able to check real-time stock levels at their local stores before an instant 48-hour reservation is placed on their items, which can be stocked in stores, ready for customers to go collect at their convenience.

Argos customers are able to Check & Reserve products up until the close of business on Christmas Eve, providing the general merchandise retailer and its customers with the advantage of last minute Christmas purchases that online retailers are unable to manage.

Note to News Editors: For more information contact Media Relations, tel: 0845 120 4365, mobile: 0771 3064079

About Argos

Argos is a unique retailer recognised for choice, value and convenience. It sells general merchandise and products for the home from over 700 stores throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland, online and over the telephone. In the last financial year, Argos sales were £4.3 billion.

Argos serves over 130 million customers a year through its stores. On average, 18 million UK households, or around two thirds of the population, have an Argos catalogue at home at any time.

Argos expects to add around 20 stores this year. Its Internet site, http://www.argos.co.uk/, was the most visited high street retailer online in the UK in 2008.

Argos is part of Home Retail Group, the UK’s leading home and general merchandise retailer.

Banks to go multi-channel

We may be on the brink of ‘multi-channel banking’ – let’s see if the Banks can catch up with the Grocers…

A new research report says UK & US banks are in danger of losing online customers unless they improve the levels of personalisation and communication offered. The report from Gartner says people in both countries are heavy users of online banking and over 40% use at least two banking sites, meaning they are in a position to compare features.

The trends observed are interesting:

• Younger respondents value features that enable customisation of their online banking experience and are looking for additional financial planning tools to help them manage their money more effectively
• Older customers seek tools that let them use current services more effectively or communicate better and want features that make the online banking channel itself easier to use

Banks can learn from the Grocers:

Retailers have spent ten years working out how to build successful e-commerce businesses and in the last three years have been moving that to a multi-channel mix that involves services like ‘ring & reserve’, range extensions and of course online order tracking.

Banks seem to have been asleep at the wheel, it’s taken them an age to react to the fact that customers are demanding more self-service and looking to manage many of their regular transactions online. But at last the Banks seem to be reacting now that the pressure is on:  There is much talk in the big banks of cost-cutting programmes – I’m told by those who should know that a key focus of this is about getting the optimum number and location of branches and getting those online services to deliver what customers want and need to take the pressure off branches and especially off call-centres.

 So we may be on the brink of ‘multi-channel banking’ – let’s see if the Banks can catch up with the Grocers, especially now that one of the Grocers is a Bank!

£84m spent online on Christmas Day

I said back in December we were staying home to do our Christmas shopping, but even so, the biggest e-commerce surprise of the year was Christmas Day and Boxing Day; 4.4 million people actually bought things online on Christmas Day, spending £84million, this on a day when the shops are supposed to be closed!!!!

Generally UK retailers have seen their online sales grow about 30% Year on Year (YoY)
- Argos MCR revenues up 33% YoY
- M&S web sales up 78%, even though overall down 2.2%
- Sainsbury’s 40% growth in last quarter, up 50% to 100,000 orders in run up to Christmas
- Amazon UK peaked on 10th December, selling 1 million products in a day, that’s 11 orders per second
-Tesco Direct (non-food) did £190m in the last quarter of 2008. Food did 2m orders in the last 12 weeks of the year.
- Interestingly, Domino’s are now doing >£1m a week online

USA reported similar performance, a Chase Group report says the online retail channel saw 29% growth in the last 10 weeks of the year.

Banking on Tesco, taking control of our finances

Tesco buys out Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) from their JV business Tesco Personal Finance. RBS expects to make about £500m from the deal but Tesco look like they have most to gain from taking control of their retail banking ambitions.

A leader in multi-channel retail to show the way in multi-channel banking?

Whilst many like to throw stones at Tesco because of their success and scale of operations, I can’t help but admire the performance they drive in each area of their business. Now it seems Retail Banks have to look to Tesco as they ditch RBS, buying them out of the JV for £950m and take the challenge to the High Street banks and the Insurance Companies.

In the eleven years since its launch, Tesco Personal Finance has been doing very nicely thank you, making a £206m profit last year and signing up five million customers. I understand that the business has very low bad debts on it’s loan books and has accumulated a 4.3% share of the UK motor insurance market. So bringing it back in-house makes great sense for Tesco, they soon won’t have to share the revenue as they grow their banking business through the launch of bank accounts and other new products. I guess they will also take it overseas into the countries where where the Tesco brand is well known and respected.

Tesco Personal Finance Key Facts:
5.5 million customers
1.3 million credit card accounts
390,000 savings accounts
6.9% share of credit card market
2,700 ATMs in Tesco stores
4.3% of car insurance market

Monetising social networks – easy to say, harder to do

A new warning just out – social networks may not drive online sales! You don’t say….

I was asked to talk about this area of online strategy at an LBS event a few weeks ago – the theme – monetizing social networks. There is a lot of interest in this right now and for good reason, we all want to make sure we are investing in stuff that will drive sales. This particular session was interesting, there were many bright individuals in the room and together we were able to highlight a few cool emerging businesses but we weren’t weighed down with examples of big brands leveraging social networks to drive online sales.

Now I see that Forrester are offering up a note of caution, claiming social networks have been considered more effective for brand-building and less proven for driving revenue or sales conversion. They say that retailers therfore need to continue investments in proven techniques like e-mail marketing and free shipping promotions to drive sales.

Well yes that’s a safe conclusion to draw because it’s a classic case of “get the basics right before adding the frills”. But it’s a big generalisation and we should all be working on improving the basics everyday anyway – I think it’s still important for anyone who owns online strategy for a retail brand to be thinking about how their customers might benefit from well thought through innovations and in some cases that will draw on social networks or on offering interaction that fits the customers mission.

This story summarising recent research with retailers in the US about their plans for online spend in 2008 suggests most aren’t thinking any further than placing ads on social network sites. I do hope some of the bright sparks in retail are thinking abit more ambitiously than this…please say yes.

BTW – i almost forgot to mention the headline news of this research from Forrester and Shop.org – Retail online sales (US) are set to grow again to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year. This despite the recession! All I can say is some brands are going to have to work harder to maintain growth and that means challenging the assumptions and thinking futher ahead – online strategy designed to deliver something of value to your customers and within a multi-channel retail strategy.

Everywhere and nowhere baby, social networking for retailers

Online Retailers today are trying to figure out how to play in the Web 2.0 world – and the latest wave is Social Networking for Retailers. I don’t know what Jeff Beck was on when he wrote the lyrics for Hi Ho Silver Lining, but he created a big hit with these lyrics:

You’re everywhere and nowhere baby, thats where you’re at. Going down a bumpy hillside, in your hippy hat…and away you go now baby, I see your sun is shining. But I won’t make a fuss, though its obvious.

 

For me this surreally sums up the approach of some current online strategies – one of the fave raves right now is monetising social networks – I was invited to discuss this very thing just last week at LBS Technology Summit - Monetising Social Networks. And this week it also cropped up in The Economist.

At LBS I was on a panel with Alex Kwiatkowski of Datamonitor, Alix Taffle of Gumtree/eBay and Indira Thambia ex Argos for an interesting discussion about what is and isn’t happening with retailers to monetise social networks. A number of interesting examples and ideas were kicked around but there just wasn’t a feeling that any of the big boys is making it a major priority right now or that we’ve seen the next big thing yet. For most retailers it’s still an experiment, and today I heard about this (good hype value) initiative just announced by Sears and Facebook – Sears is kicking off a new prom-dress campaign that lets shoppers share their selections with friends on Facebook. The other interesting initiatives are coming from niche or specialist online players – I like this one for shoe lovers.

I’ll be keeping my eye on how this all unfolds, but I’m sure we won’t be calling it social networking for retailers in 3 years, and it certainly won’t be a business model as such – just another element in the proposition or experience for those that get it right – shall we call it Social Shopping?

Christmas is coming and we’re staying home to shop

Christmas is coming, I was out last night enjoying the christmas lights and eating turkey with all the trimmings. Whilst all that feels a bit early in mid November you can be sure the retailers are ready and whatever is happening on the high street there is certainly another big uplift in online sales.

According to the IMRG christmas statement 27 million of us will shop online during the festive season and we will spend £13.8 billion!

Elsewhere I read that despite all the recent headlines about house price concerns and trouble in the financial markets spending to date this Christmas is up 7% on this time last year. Apparently consumers expect to spend on average £706 per person compared with £662 in 2006 so there is little sign of cutting back.

The fact that we are doing our christmas shopping online isn’t surprising when you think about it. Very few homes are not online now and so many of us are plugged into broadband so it’s just so much more convenient to sort out our christmas list at home on the web. In fact that’s exactly what I did this morning in the comfort of home rather than the battle in town.

How will you shop this christmas? If you’re looking for inspiration, try the gift ideas generator www.giftgen.co.uk

And take a look at IMRG’s top 10 safe online shopping tips;
1. All of your usual shopping rights apply online: see www.consumer.gov.uk
2. Know who you’re dealing with: get the seller’s landline phone number and postal address
3. Be aware of terms and conditions: check payment and delivery details
4. Keep records of what you order
5. EU Law protects you against fraudulent use of your payment card in EU transactions: credit cards give you extra protection
6. Only give your payment card details over a secure connection, and never by email: never disclose your PIN number to anyone, and never send it over the internet
7. You usually have at least 7 days to cancel an order and request a refund from an EU retailer
8. Check your payment card statement carefully: you have at least 90 days to report a suspect transaction
9. When you buy goods online from outside the EU you are an importer and may be liable to pay any Customs Duty and VAT and you should err on the side of caution as it may be difficult to seek redress if problems arise
10. If you have a problem, contact the seller then, if you need to, the payment company, local Trading Standards Office and any ‘trustmark’ organisation the seller is registered with

TCR, the new MCR

This may well be the new acronym to push MCR aside – let me tell you about a concept I’ve been working on recently with Simon Clark and Ray Fowler. TCR takes retailing lessons cross-sector and impacts on media, telecoms and services companies dealing with consumers online and across multiple channels.

TCR is the end to end management of physical products and digital assets from production to consumption.

Consumers are buying physical goods and digital downloads through the same channels and increasingly from the same brands. TCR addresses the management of all these products and assets to ensure the desired customer experience and business performance.

As all consumer brands compete for share of wallet Retailers, Media and Telcos are battling each other in a rapidly converging market. Each will approach this opportunity with their own particular business and customer strategy and how each aims to differentiate may vary, but one thing is for sure. How effective they are in their end to end processes for creation, transaction and delivery of products and services will dictate their success.

• TCR is about how customers access your products and services through the range of channels available to them

• TCR is about how companies enable customers to do this effectively through their propositions, processes and systems

• The emergence of digital products and services in today’s broadband world means that physical and digital supply chain issues now overlap

I like Ray Fowler’s sound-bite to describe TCR – “from warehouses to websites, DVDs to MP3s”.

Is this the next new thing, is this the right definition, what do you think?

MCR, the bricks and clicks revenge

When I wrote about the bricks and clicks revenge back in the 20th century, my view was that consumers would be looking at high street stores for an extension of their service across a range of channels and that some online only brands would struggle to compete with this multi-channel approach.

Some top British retail brands are living up to this potential with Argos and Tesco pushing ahead and an increasingly large pack following and looking for their own magic mix to take some of the advantage for themselves.

According to online retail research group IMRG, britons have spent more than £100bn online since 1995. Online sales for April ’07 rose 55 per cent, the largest rise since December ‘03 when Christmas shopping sent sales soaring. Retailers that embraced online sales early are reaping the benefits; Tesco is now the UK’s fourth largest internet retailer, with Tesco.com processing almost £1bn of grocery sales and generating profits of £56m. Only Amazon, Dell and Argos rank higher, with Argos easily transferring its catalogue shopping online to cash in on the boom. And John Lewis Direct reported good growth in the first quarter of the year, their Head of eCommerce, David Walmsley said online sales increased by 45 per cent in the period.

It’s not difficult to see why “bricks and mortar” retailers and catalogue companies are investing in the web and looking for ways to integrate all their customer channels. They are viewing the ROI of their web investments in a new light – total customer value. All the evidence is that customers who shop with a retailer in more than one channel are significantly more valuable, increasing their average spend by at least 50%. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the majority of consumers do their product research online before they purchase offline. This means that in-store, in-catalogue and online marketing and promotions need to be integrated to ensure best results.

So that’s what it says in the business cases being approved by the top retail boards, but what does integrated multi-channel retail mean to you?