Multichannel Retail Roundup

This is the first in what I hope to make a regular spot on the blog where I'll be rounding up and summarising articles, blog posts and generally any content that's caught my attention relating to Multichannel Retail. Hopefully you'll find some of it interesting and of relevance.

UK Retailers continue to invest in multichannel programmes
First up is this recent article documenting the multichannel round table debate hosted by BT Expedite. Looks like it was a very open debate, with some great soundbites captured and addressing some common issues across retailers. I particularly like Andrew Clarkes comment relating to TopShop not becoming a social networking site, which RetailWeek decided to highlight in a callout. Reading between the lines it sounds like there could be some disagreement on strategy there between the parent and operating company. Another notable mention in the article was Comet's click to chat, whilst they were reluctant to give out figures the article seemed to suggest they've seen a measured impact on conversions. As a slight side on this, an ATG partner recently implemented a callback feature for a Health Insurance client. An email was automatically sent to the call centre when a customer abandoned their application, the call agent contacted the customer to see if they could be of assistance - this resulted in a 17% reduction in abandonment, imagine something similar for an online retail site as part of checkout abandonment.

How a Company’s Culture Can Affect Efforts to Integrate Channels
This article published by Retail Systems Research provides an interesting insight in to the multichannel strategy of US retailer, Bare Escentuals. Clearly hampered by their US growth strategy, whilst complex was primarily product-centric and store based (typical of most traditional brick'n'mortar retailers world-wide), are using their EU and Asia expansion to implement their multichannel vision. The final objective to migrate their US operations to the multichannel model once it has proved itself. This is a relatively risk free approach, as it removes any potential impact on their currently successful, if slightly hamstrung, US business.

Blog: Mobile Retail - Coming to any store near you
Finally in this roundup, a fellow blogger's post on mobile retail and the recent Forrester Report. Some nice references to recent mobile retail applications and how consumers are now using mobile devices more and more to inform their buying decisions whilst on the move.