After some 19 years of struggling with e-commerce, Walmart is once again learning that managing a merged channel retail strategy is almost never going to beat a well-run pure play e-tailer like Amazon when it comes to online sales.
The myth of showrooming - the suggestion that tons of shoppers are flooding stores to only use them as a physical showroom as they had always intended to purchase the product at Amazon - lives on. But a survey conducted in late April by Bizrate Insights is helping to add a little clarity. First, showrooming really doesn't happen very often. But more interestingly, when it does, it's more likely to be within the same chain. That's a problem all right, but the name of that problem isn't showrooming. It's internal politics.
Despite the high expectations of wholesale buyers, nearly 40 percent of the top wholesale companies have extremely basic or nonexistent websites, missing an opportunity to enhance the buyer experience through e-commerce, according to a report from hybris, a commerce platform.
"Multichannel" (or even better, "omnichannel") is something almost every self-respecting retailer wants to be. But most pure-play internet vendors resist the idea that actual stores, with their rents, payrolls and security cameras, ought to be one of those channels. The thought of having the same costs as bricks-and-mortar competitors "scares the living daylights out of me," says Charles Hunt, owner of Duvet and Pillow Warehouse, a fast-growing online retailer. Yet things are changing.
Fifty-three percent of industry leaders believe that improving customers' retail experience would be essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme, according to survey by SAP. The GSMA Mobile World Congress survey is aimed at addressing top issues facing mobile commerce service providers and reflects the sentiments of mobile operators, fixed telecommunication providers, over-the-top (OTT) players and other global mobile industry executives.
It's a curiosity of how the internet works that a shopper using a search engine to find a flat-screen TV probably will not turn up Costco Wholesale, a major television vendor and the country's largest retailer after Walmart.
I'm a big fan of online shopping, with my personal favorites being Piperlime and ASOS. Let's face it - in an increasingly busy and hectic world, if you had the choice between buying something from the comfort of your own home, or pushing through throngs of crazed shoppers on a Saturday afternoon, for a lot of people the decision is an easy one. For me, it's a no-brainer.