Google Rules for Retail
Posted
by David Dorf
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Published on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:48:46 -0600
Indexed on
2010/04/26
14:44 UTC
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1-800-Flowers
|Barnes & Noble
|Best Buy
|H&M
|Jeff Jarvis
|Kohl's
|Lowes
|Newegg
|Sears
|Starbucks
|target
|Tesco
|Threadless
|Wet Seal
|Whole Foods
|Zappos
|Zara
|lululemon
Google Rule |
Industry Examples |
New Retailer Rule |
New Relationship Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner |
Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond
to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers. |
Listen to what your customers are saying about you. Convert the critics to fans and the fans to
influencers. |
New Architecture Join a network; be a platform |
Tesco and BestBuy
released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new
applications. |
Become a destination for information. |
New Publicness Life is public, so is business |
Zappos and WholeFoods
founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and
connecting to customers. It's not
always pretty, but it's genuine. |
Be transparent. Share both your successes and failures with
your customers. |
New Society Elegant organization |
Wet Seal helps their customers
assemble outfits and show them off to each other. Barnes & Noble
has a community site that includes a bookclub. |
Communities of your customers already exist, so help them organize better. |
New Economy Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches |
lululemon found a niche for yoga
inspired athletic wear. Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs
of T-shirts. |
Serve small markets with niche products. |
New Business Reality Decide what business you're in |
When Lowes realized catering to women
brought the men along, their sales increased. |
Customers want experiences to go with the products they buy. |
New Attitude Trust the people and listen |
In 2008 Starbucks launched
MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers. |
Use social networks as additional data points for making better
merchandising decisions. |
New Ethic Be honest and transparent; don't be evil |
Target is giving away reusable
shopping bags for Earth Day. Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays. |
Being green
earns customers'
respect and lowers costs too. |
New Speed Life is live |
Be prepared
to pounce on you customers' fickle interests. |
|
New Imperatives Encourage, enable and protect innovation |
1-800-Flowers was the first do sales
in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce. The Sears
Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo. |
Give your staff permission to fail so innovation won't be
stifled. |
Jeff will be a keynote speaker at Crosstalk, our upcoming annual user conference, so I'm looking forward to hearing more of his perspective on retail and the new economy.
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