Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

big picture

A little retail magic

In order to survive, retailers will need to add a little pixie dust to the sales process.

This past holiday season, my family and I spent a couple of days at Disneyland. If you've never done so, the holidays are a wonderful time to visit the "happiest place on earth." What makes it especially enjoyable are the magical touches that Disney employs to transform its parks for the holidays, which include altering some of the attractions just for the season.

Entire libraries full of business books expound on the rationale behind Disneyland—how employees are cast members putting on a show for guests and how every detail is planned to emotionally transport visitors to new and fanciful worlds. I won't go into all of that here. Suffice it to say that from the very beginning, Walt Disney deliberately chose to build more than just an amusement park; he planned to create an experience.


This past February, I attended the annual conference of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), where I heard a similar theme from many of the speakers. For retailers to survive, they can't simply sell products anymore. Instead, they must create experiences for their customers.

How would this change retail as we know it? First, as with Disneyland, the customer must feel as if the shopping experience was created just for them. Stores themselves need to become more than just a place to pick up necessities. The everyday things that don't require evaluation can and will be more easily delivered directly to the home, or at least gathered for easy customer pickup.

For other items, brick-and-mortar stores need to transform into places of discovery, where shoppers are encouraged to try new products tailored to their individual wants and needs. Store employees will work to understand each customer's journey. As one speaker at the RILA conference put it, "Customer data is the new commerce."

Estimates are that e-commerce will account for 70 percent of retail transactions by 2025. So, in addition to the in-store experience, retailers also have to enhance the delivery experience. Retailers must provide a wider online assortment with ease of ordering. They need to understand their customers well enough to offer related or alternative products.

The package itself should also enhance the shopping experience. It must arrive on time—or better yet, earlier than expected—with some unexpected surprises thrown in. Customers should open the package with the same enthusiasm as opening a present. And the entire process must be repeatable every time but with new twists and surprises.

Retailers can survive into the future. But those that do will think first of the customer experience. And a little pixie dust wouldn't hurt either.

The Latest

More Stories

power outage map after hurricane

Southeast region still hindered by hurricane power outages

States across the Southeast woke up today to find that the immediate weather impacts from Hurricane Helene are done, but the impacts to people, businesses, and the supply chain continue to be a major headache, according to Everstream Analytics.

The primary problem is the collection of massive power outages caused by the storm’s punishing winds and rainfall, now affecting some 2 million customers across the Southeast region of the U.S.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Survey: In-store shopping sentiment up 21%

Survey: In-store shopping sentiment up 21%

E-commerce activity remains robust, but a growing number of consumers are reintegrating physical stores into their shopping journeys in 2024, emphasizing the need for retailers to focus on omnichannel business strategies. That’s according to an e-commerce study from Ryder System, Inc., released this week.

Ryder surveyed more than 1,300 consumers for its 2024 E-Commerce Consumer Study and found that 61% of consumers shop in-store “because they enjoy the experience,” a 21% increase compared to results from Ryder’s 2023 survey on the same subject. The current survey also found that 35% shop in-store because they don’t want to wait for online orders in the mail (up 4% from last year), and 15% say they shop in-store to avoid package theft (up 8% from last year).

Keep ReadingShow less
containers stacked in a yard

Reinke moves from TIA to IANA in top office

Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.

Reinke will take her new job upon the retirement of Joni Casey at the end of the year. Casey had announced in July that she would step down after 27 years at the helm of IANA.

Keep ReadingShow less
Driverless parcel delivery debuts in Switzerland
Loxo/Planzer

Driverless parcel delivery debuts in Switzerland

Two European companies are among the most recent firms to put autonomous last-mile delivery to the test with a project in Bern, Switzerland, that debuted this month.

Swiss transportation and logistics company Planzer has teamed up with fellow Swiss firm Loxo, which develops autonomous driving software solutions, for a two-year pilot project in which a Loxo-equipped, Planzer parcel delivery van will handle last-mile logistics in Bern’s city center.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dock strike: Shippers seek ways to minimize the damage

Dock strike: Shippers seek ways to minimize the damage

As the hours tick down toward a “seemingly imminent” strike by East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers, experts are warning that the impacts of that move would mushroom well-beyond the actual strike locations, causing prevalent shipping delays, container ship congestion, port congestion on West coast ports, and stranded freight.

However, a strike now seems “nearly unavoidable,” as no bargaining sessions are scheduled prior to the September 30 contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) in their negotiations over wages and automation, according to the transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.

Keep ReadingShow less