E-commerce hand in hand with the real world

C&A has reacted to this trend with omni-channel marketing as part of their C&A Fashion Like project It is worth taking a look at an example of using omnichannel marketing, which was implemented as part of the ‘C&A Fashion like’ project. Clothes hangers in their stores display the number of likes recorded on Facebook in real time for their various fashions by using the SAP S/4 HANA digital platform. The result of the campaign was to reach out to 8.8 mln people, with the C&A brand gaining 1,000 new fans per hour and, most importantly, some of its collections were sold out in one day.

Analysts claim that new sales trends will change nearly on a daily basis. The issues that are ever more often being discussed in marketing are the merging of sales channels, giving the customer a 360 degree view and involving customers in brand promotion. Such a marketing landscape is best approached with a 1:1 marketing strategy, building customer relations built on personalised interactions. Each product category is different: railway tickets are purchased quickly but consumers spend their time on buying household appliances. The longer the purchasing decision takes, the more sales channels should be used. Consumers’ habits change and with the ubiquity of mobile devices, shopping can be done anywhere.

A study by BigCommerce found that 43 pct of people in the US shop in bed, one in four shops at work, and one in five in the bathroom or car. The interaction of online and real-world stores present another challenge for brands. Contrary to the pessimistic predictions of analysts from a few years ago, online and real-world purchases have not been competing with each other. As many as 75 pct Americans view products online while in a real-world store.. At the same time consumers still want to try out ‘real’ products, which 49 pct of Americans surveyed regarded as a serious drawback to online sales. Austrian supermarket chain Spar has chosen a strategy of adjusting to market changes with the use of predictive analysis, mobile technologies and social media. One of its projects that results from this strategy is a digital price setting system for the products on its shelves. Although they appear the same as printed prices, they can be changed in real time. The chain has also installed beacons in its selected stores that send personalised information to customers’ mobile phones. Spar uses the SAP Customer Activity Repository system to analyse the data collected in this way. It is based on the SAP HANA platform and provides greater transparency for sales, faster data analysis as well as results for individual stores. Importantly, with SAP tools the company can analyse the efficiency of all its sales channels and examine the behaviour of particular customer groups.