In only 4 year, sports retailer Stadium, has transformed from being a dominant retail chain in the retail, to a modern multi-channel company with online e-commerce and e-commerce in store.
This webinar recap will talking about the challenges in making that transformation, with the system and organizational demands of integrated marketing, Synchronized price and assortment, custom catalogs, direct delivery, multiple shipping and payment methods etc.
About Stadium
- Founded 1974 i Norrköping, Sweden
- 108 stores in Sweden, Denmark, Finland
- 3000 employees.
- Offer active people sport and sports fashion products with good function, design and quality at the best price.
- Key factors for success: Innovation and continuous development of the concept and products.
- Customer database – Approximately 800 000 members
- Website: www.stadium.se, www.stadium.dk and www.stadium.fi
Recap Key-Note
Why is multichannel important to consider?
- Today’s consumers are constantly changing their purchasing behavior
- They are in all possible sales channels and they expect that you, as a trader are there also
- Being in multiple sales channels is one thing
- To have a strategy to activate the channels and to use the channels in synergy benefits is another
- Multi Channel Strategy provides long-term competitiveness and profitability
The New consumer
Before the new consumer makes a purchase – she has therefore interacted with the brand on the web, in stores, with customer service, discussed with friends and relatives, compared prices, etc. etc.
What we should ask ourselves is therefore:
1. Where are the customers today and what is their buying behavior? We know, for example that pre-buy research (e.g. to collect information on product online before buying) is the dominant purchase behavior in many industries. In several cases up to 70% of all purchases was preceded by this behavior.
2. Where is the most profitable customers? Surveys show that customers who engage in Cross Channel shopping (e.g. Customers who purchase in several channels) buy for more money, than customers who do not, therefore, this segment has a greater total value for the retailer.
3. What do we know if the customer through multiple interaction points? Can we tie the customer closer to the brand by leveraging this information?
Definitions
Multichannel
The most straight forward definition of multi-channel is simply:
”To offer the customer more than a way to buy something”
Cross Channel
The Utilization of multichannel synergy
Multi-channel strategy
Strategic framework for defining resources and multichannel opportunity in Company, Customer and Competition
Company
We discuss Cross channel optimization, as a process of systematically trying to find and develop the strength in each channel, but also to dismantle and transfer the inefficient functionality to a channel that can deliver it to a lower cost.
Customer
Piecing together sales and marketing in all channels in order to meet consumers in a uniform manner regardless of whether it is in a site on the web, the paper catalog, TV advertisements or in a physical store
Competitors
Keeping the competitors multichannel strategy in close review
Multi Channel Effect
If we use the strategic planning and apply it in the right way, then when you can achieve – Multi Channel Effect, where we can:
- Meet the customer at the customer’s requirements
- Strengthen brand.
- Achieve Synergies between channels
- Increase the total transaction.
Information and organization
Multichannel strategy raises new demands and requirements on information systems and organizations.
If a customer does their pre-buy research in a catalog or an e-mail, then seek additional information in search engines and price comparison sites, then order online, receive notice of the cell phone and finally pick up and pay for the goods in stores, then there is a lot of processes that have to go together for this to work.
Examples of information needed:
- Store: signs, promotions, club
- Catalog: Model Images with long anticipation (time of manufacture)
- Customer Service-Call: Promotions, product information, customer information
- Web: Category, cross sell-uppsell, long product descriptions, images for all color settings (if we talk of fashion), product information in distributed format for example Google, Prisjakt
- eMail: Weekly Specials, personalization has content
- InStoreMedia: Last Varmärkesbyggande movie, Retail Promotions, interactive content
- Mobile: Gift, announcements etc anapssade-mobile pages
Involved systems:
- Purchasing System
- PIM with approval flows
- e-Commerce platform (customer, order, product)
- Business – Backend (range, price, balance,
- Stock system (pick, pack and announcements)
The Stadium solution
Stadium saw the opportunity at the place they were in about 4 years ago. It is Sweden’s largest chain of stores in its segment. It has strong traffic on Stadium.se, which is a popular site, but the site only shows parts of the range and it does not live up to user expectations. Stadium also had plans for further internationalization.
The different channels
In addition to the stores, the additional channel was StadiumTV. It is currently not an integrated solution (but we hope it may be). In 2007, the new e-commerce site was launched on www.stadium.se. The site introduced a lot of integration with the stores. The E-commerce then made possible new e-mail channels and the distribution of digital products via Mobile text.
Stadium also wanted to use the store network and launched a pilot project on e-commerce in the store, in the form of internet terminals or kiosks.
Another possible channel that is not used today is a call center. Another of our customers, Elgiganten do this today. On a slimmed version of the site, Customer service personnel can receive new orders and also work with upsell on existing orders. The customer service personnel who sell receive a commission for it.
Another channel that is enabled through the e-commerce requirements for product information and direct delivery is catalog.
e-commerce in store
Stadiums (eKiosker) has been out on a pilot in 20 stores. It is an interactive terminal that presents stadium.se with custom functionality added, such as a card reader for login and card, EAN-scanner and touch-screen keyboard.
The eKiosks has several purposes. It can work as:
- Sales support for store personnel (find, present and check balance on an item)
- Education Tools for staff
- Sales Channel (get what is not in stock sent home. Any orders placed from a terminal is logge which enables to work with incentives to drive orders in the store.
- Inspiration (create the stay time in the store)
Stadium is currently evaluating this test and look at how to proceed
Multi Channel Resources Online
If we then take and look at the site (www.stadium.se), the following features are multi-channel integrated.
- Show Stock balance on articles in every store
- In-store pick up
- Order History (all purchases in stores and on the Web)
- Gift Certificates (can be bought and used in all channels)
Additional Features includes
- Auctions
- Shop-in-shop (user’s own product)
- Product Reviews
- Insprational articles
- Buying guides
- Wishlists
- Membership Bonus
- Payment by 4 different payment methods
- Delivery by 3 different delivery options
- Charts on the best sellers in each product category
- Member price
- Product Comparisons
- Cross-sell via related product recommendations
- Product Recommendations (tell a friend)
- Discount driven by product and consumer group
Success
The things that exceeded Stadiums expectation after going live with the site was:
- The number of visits to the site
- More well-informed sturdy visitors in the physical store
- High cut orders
- Complement products. Other product categories was successful online when compared with in-store. So products not suitable for the physical store has a good fit on the web
Challenges
Conversion and the combination of multichannel and online sales, product availability and customer support.
Operational. What happens after go-live, a lot of it is technology driven in a uppstart and it is easy to miss questions on the operational as quickly after the launch
More Challenges
- Organizational and top management buy-in
- Stock and Logistics
- Product Information Management (PIM)
- The stores a place for e-ordering, delivery and returns
- Assortment of the various channels
- Pricing in the different channels
- Coordination of campaigns, product, customer and Marketing
- Suppliers and platforms and other support
- Measurement and monitoring
- Awareness of audience
What will happen the future for Stadium
- Stadium opens e-commerce in Denmark and Finland in the autumn
- Evaluate and make a study into the e-kiosks experiment
- Loyalty Program will be developed with the web in a central role.
- Social media – how can it be used on stadium.se. Development is ongoing.
- Product strategy and inventory to become more effective
Key factors for succeeding with multichannel
- Customer perspective – test the customer experience!
- Organization – for decision and implementation
- Objectives – Ensure that the right things done
- ”Learn by walking” – Develop – Test – Measure – Developing!
More about multichannel
You find the re-play of this webinar here
