Three Different Approaches to Omni Retailing: The Nordstrom Approach, The Macy\'

Question

Three Different Approaches to Omni Retailing: The Nordstrom Approach, The Macy's  Approach, The Rent the Runway  Approach: Different but the same? Choose a point of view. Which one of these retailers are headed in the right direction? Are all three of them winning, or is one of them gaining ground with their strategies? Are all three of them losing? Make sure to bring NEW information and research to the discussion. Don't consider what has happened in the past to these retailers, look at the current strategies ( find other new strategies these retailers have undertaken) and form your point of view.   If the thought you want to express has already been discussed, please choose another aspect of the discussion. Highest grades are earned by teaching us something new, not re-stating what was already expressed. Link and discuss new articles on this issue.

Explanation / Answer

First let us try to understand what does Omni-channel retailing means actually, as people change their behaviors, marketers, salespeople, and customer support reps will need to react accordingly. Instead of thinking of a desktop experience, a mobile experience, a tablet experience, the marketers and organizations need to pursue one, holistic approach. Omni-channel experience is a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out, for a particular brand or organization. An Omni-channel approach means there's total integration among distribution, promotion and communication channels on the back end to facilitate a seamless experience for the consumers as well as the company. This means, suppose a customer service representative is interacting with a customer in a brick and mortar store, and he or she can reference the customer's previous purchases and preferences whenever required and as easily as a customer service representative on the phone or a customer service web chat representative. Another example is the customer can use a desktop to check inventory by store on the company's website, buy the item later with a smartphone, and pick it up at a desired location. Omni-channel is built on multiple methods of promoting and distributing products, such as brick and mortar stores, websites and mobile apps, and allowing customers to reach out to the brand with their problems or concerns by phone, email, web chat, social media and other digital platforms.

The different approaches to Omni retailing like the Nordstrom approach, the Macy’s approach, the rent the runway approach may be different, but even if the approach is different their underlying objective and idea is same. Macy’s used digital platform to optimize its logistics while still making excellent use of its widespread store locations. Store distribution centers supplemented the BUY ONLINE PICKUP IN STORE program, which helped bring customers into the stores. Macy’s has a 150-year old history, though it ran into early challenges when attempting to adapt to the internet marketplace as one of the first company to transform into a digital business, but eventually they found a footing and lunged forward with vigorous enthusiasm to attract the potential customers to its stores. Macy’s, Inc. clearly states in its website and other PR release that the customer is paramount and that all its actions and Omni channel strategies must be directed toward providing a personalized merchandise offering and shopping experience online and in store for the customers. On the other hand, another company, Nordstrom has made it possible to buy items from Instagram and find items based on Pinterest favorites and other social media platforms. Items for sale from the retailer’s feed are displayed as grid of photos. Shoppers can scroll these photos at their free time and add items to their wish list or shopping cart very easily. Nordstrom prepared themselves to support the use of these digital marketing tools and is able to deliver products quickly to the customer and also at lower costs. Initiatives like these will surely keep a retailer ahead of its competitors. We need to understand that the online and off-line worlds are colliding at the present. Fashion rental company Rent the Runway has announced it will be using iOS-based interactive kiosks to improve customer experience and speed up the process of picking up, dropping off and exchanging orders at its retail stores. The kiosks will be used at Rent the Runway's flagship New York City store, as well as stores in Chicago, San Francisco, California and Washington, DC. Rent the Runway uses technology on the back end to personalize the experience in-store in massive scale. Since their model of sales is appointment-based, they schedule appointments for customers who give them their personal details including size, etc. When they come into the store, the company already has sort out merchandise specifically for them, which makes their time in the store more efficient and effective. Ultimately, the modern day organizations should consist of a strategic plan to build a coherent, aligned experience across multiple platforms for their customers. The above mentioned companies may be of different eras but still they continue to transform and hence survived the market. It can be said that if these companies did not switch to the digital platforms, they would surely perish under competitor pressure. Certainly, Omni-channel user experiences still have a long way to go, and the scale of some of the integrations might make the entire endeavor feel out of reach for smaller companies, but the advantages of the strategy exuberantly exceeds any challenges that the companies might face to implement it. It can be definitely said that these retailers are doing the right thing and surely not loosing.

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