Hope for Brick & Mortar Retail

Sarah Lacy, Senior Editor of TechCrunch! stated that we are witnessing the revenge of the brick and mortar stores. Even though e-commerce is 10% of retail sales, it happens to be a very disruptive 10%. Many retail models have been turned on their heads because of this new way of shopping, selecting and purchasing products.

The way things were “always done” are no more and the reality is that there is some scrambling to keep up with mobile and other technologies to keep customers engaged, loyal and happy.

The original ways of doing business online were driven by convenience and low price. Over time, the online shopping experience has been transformed to include high touch or human driven experiences (e.g., customer recommendations, “people also bought” messages, live customer chats, etc.) – also known as curation.

Really, what’s happening is that offline and online worlds are colliding. As customers continue to transact online or on their Smartphones, these transactions are enhanced using real world experiences thanks to connections with others on these sorts of platforms: Yelp, Groupon, Foursquare, Twitter and Shopkick.  read the rest (Source: Hanifin Loyalty)