Is It Too Early to Plan for the 2014 Holiday Season? NO!

Posted on March 27, 2014 by bermanevansretail
Even though many retailers are still redeeming gift cards and processing customer returns from holiday 2013, it is time to be planning for holiday 2014. It is not too early.
As Newgistics says: “Preparing a holiday 2014 strategy can require looking at nearly every area of the retailer’s business. By starting now, retailers have plenty of time to implement and test technologies and tactics so that when November and December roll around, they’re ready. ‘It takes a lot of planning and testing to properly prepare for the holidays, because any changes retailers make to their Web sites have cascading effects that impact their performance downstream,’ says Elizabeth Scott, director of technical services for Tenzing Managed IT Services, a provider of hosting solutions for E-retailers. ‘Identifying the areas where upgrades are needed now means retailers can use the selling seasons leading up to the holidays to audition and fine-tune those improvements.'”
Click the image to read some advice from Newgistics.


 

Posted in Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 6: Merchandise Management and Pricing, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ramping Up the Customer Experience

Posted on March 26, 2014 by bermanevansretail
Take a look at a recent interview that Evans on Marketing did with Rachel Levy Sarfin of OnlyIT.ca on how companies can improve the customer shopping experience.
As Sarfin says: “The well-known adage of ‘the customer is always right’ is no longer enough to improve the shopping experience for today’s consumers. Customers hold certain expectations of their interactions with businesses, and in the Digital Age, if those expectations are not met, they will share their displeasure with thousands of people through social media.”
Click the image to read the interview.

 

Posted in Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Reverse Logistics: How to Improve the Retail Returns Process

Posted on March 25, 2014 by bermanevansretail
Superior reverse logistics are critical to both retailers and customers. Retailers need to handle returns efficiently and effectively; and customers sometimes find onerous return policies to be deal breakers.
Consider these observations from Lisa Terry, writing for Inbound Logistics:
“The forward side of retail logistics spends September through December moving high volumes of goods into stores and e-commerce distribution centers. For reverse logistics, however, it’s all about January, February, and March. That’s when the good, the bad, and the ugly post-holiday returns hit: damaged, unwanted, outmoded, leaking, spoiled, or counterfeit merchandise that pours back into retail stores and returns consolidation centers, accounting for 40 to 60 percent of the year’s returns. It is up to retail’s reverse logistics operations to separate the wheat from the chafe, performing triage and processing it all to reduce costs and mitigate loss.”
“Retailers are devoting more attention and resources to reverse logistics as they seek to extract as much value as possible from returned goods. The average retailer’s reverse logistics costs for consumer goods are equal to an average 8.1 percent of total sales — a figure which, unlike forward logistics, includes the value of the goods.”
Click the image to read several suggestions from Terry on how to better manage retail returns.

 

Posted in Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments