Australian retailers trying to reach and retain consumers online will underperform if they fail to learn from the mistakes made by their counterparts in the US, according to the executive director of Salmat DigitalForce, Paul Marshall.
In his presentation at the Retail World Summit in Sydney today, Marshall warned that retailers risked losing market share if they did not synchronise their strategies across different channels, otherwise known as cross-channel retailing.
“The internet has opened up a whole new channel for retailers to reach consumers, however it’s critical that a retailer’s eCommerce business is not set up as a siloed operation.”
In the US, many major retailers established their online business as a separate operation to their bricks and mortar stores, with different strategies, giving rise to numerous customer service problems. Marshall has warned Australian retailers not to make the same mistakes.
By engaging in multi-channel retailing, customers are able to more easily find and interact with a business, says Marshall.
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