全渠道履约：零售商面临的挑战和建议_北京转创国际管理咨询有限公司广东分公司

Executive Summary

Retail today, is in the outburst of several market evolutions. Technology has reshaped the retail industry, irrevocably changing where and how retailers sell their products and services to customers. Online retailing has created a whole new class of competitors across all industry segments, pushing brick-and-mortar retailers into digital channels, sometimes haphazardly and often without adoption of the right tools. The rapid rise of the always-connected personal devices hasalso placed unprecedented levels of price and product information at the shoppers’ fingertips.

In addition, the retail industry is being transformed by mass production, global supply chains, and mass-market retailers that now offer products previously confined to mid- and upper-tier brands. This is causing retailers to differentiate themselves on the services they offer rather than the products they sell. A significant demographic shift is also quietly modifying the consumer segments to which retailers offer their wares. With the aging of baby boomers comes an increased demand for services. And as a majority of the millennials and Gen Z consumers enter into their primary household formation andemployment years, retailers must adjust to meet the needs of a culturally diverse and technology-dependent market.The impact of these major transitions is being felt by retailers in the form of new shopper behaviors and expectations of a single, integrated, and seamless shopping experience, no matter which device or “channel” consumers use.

This new paradigm is often referred to as “omni-channel retailing” – where shoppers increasingly buy virtually anything, anywhere, anytime, using any connected device. Customers are constantly on the lookout for a “seamless” omni-channel shopping experience to:

• Buy online and pick it up in the store.

• Try it on in the store and get it delivered at home if the color they want is out of stock in the local store.

• Place an order on a mobile device and be assured that the item is not only available, but also be able to choose how much to pay for shipping and know exactly when it will be delivered.

• Order online, have it delivered at home and return to the store if it doesn’t fit.

Most retailers find their operational models challenged as a result. Channel-specific operations were developed to follow the “store” model. This tried-and-true model assumes that consumers investigate, select, pay for, and take possession of their purchases in one physical place: the store. For retailers who ventured into multi-channel operations such as catalog and the web, the non-store channels usually replicated what retailers did in store operations, that is, that everything from the supply chain through the point-of-sale was aligned to the channel. Omni-channel shopping breaks the traditional operational model. Now, consumers routinely investigate and select products in non-store channels, even when they complete those purchases in the store. Consumers don’t care about channels, but they do care about finding solutions to their lifestyle needs, and a retailer either satisfies a need or it doesn’t. This is the omni-channel fulfilment challenge.

The challenge is to be able to satisfy and ship orders from any source from the closest point from where the consumer is buying it to minimize transportation costs. Retailers need to have as few steps as possible between the time a customer places an order to the time they receive their order to ensure timely delivery and happy customers. In order for retailers to successfully address the challenge, they must be able to see the customer’s experience across the entire retail enterprise.