I wrote an article on LinkedIn and was wondering what all you guys think? E-commerce VS Retail in MI. In modern times we are witnessing a vast increase in on-line shopping and sales and a gradual decline of retail and high street sales. The MI sales industry is no exception to this trend but are we using technology, collectively to run ourselves out of the job? Why have a retail store? Pay rent and utilities on the premises, pay staffing costs and overheads and everything else that comes with a retail environment along with stock? To be able to sell on-line the company still requires a distribution point, staffing costs and stock expenses but also the cost of web development and a web hosting fee. The obvious and well know advantages are that a website can been seen by a much wider audience and with the use of modern technology, there is no need for the consumer to travel to a high street retail store to look for what they want when they can browse their laptop. Many MI retailers have both and on-line and high street presence and in almost all MI sales companies and in some companies these can be seen as an advantage and disadvantage. In almost all MI sales companies the sales staff both on-line and high street are paid commission sales whether it be commission on individual sales, overall profit sales or individual SPIF’s (Sales Promotion Incentive Fund) on selected items. In one aspect running the E-commerce sales though the high street store means the on-line sales are not directly taking sales from the high street shops, thus the high street shop is working and selling more though both physically to in store shoppers as well as on-line sales from said high street MI retailer. The other aspect is a singular company with both a separate on-line and high street presence. Theoretically they would be in direct competition with each other due to the current trend of growing e-commerce sales the high street retail staff could or would be losing out on said sales and that all important profit based commission. I believe the latter can be troublesome in a number of ways for example; I will use guitar sales as that is my expertise and speciality. A customer browses in a MI high street store, goes home orders the guitar online and the next day said guitar arrives. For example a Gibson Les Paul Junior and it has the common problem of poor earthing in the electrical cavity or the nut is cut too low for the strings. Now the customer has 2 options. Deal with it over the phone or via email with the online customer service or they can take the guitar to the MI high street retailer of the same company to get it dealt with and fixed there and then or the guitar replaced under warranty. I believe and especially with instruments a customer should hold the instrument in their hand before buying it. Try the instrument to make sure it feels right for them, plays the way it should and sounds as they would like it to sound. Retail MI products specialist are there to take care of and advise customers in a personal way to find out exactly what the customer wants and what guitar (for example) fits the customer’s needs and requirements within the customer’s said budget. These details cannot be ascertained though a computer screen and now the poor retail staff have to deal with what was an online customer service problem. I would like to say that I am not putting down e-commerce sales or an online sales presence but I do think an amalgamation of online and retail sales would be advantageous to the MI industry. Such as the online sales and orders being dealt with in the high street store directly with possibly both online sales and high street sales staff working in the same premises and both sides sharing the profits of the online and retail sales as all sales still come out of the said shop. If there is a chain of say 5 shops and 1 one of the shops has the item then a computerised service such as an automatic order distribution system would send that sale to the shop that has the item but also could distribute the online web based sales evenly between the 5 shops. The staff could be working together to a singular goal of profitability without conflict, competition or resentment between on-line e-commerce web based sales and high street retail store sales.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:41:14 +0000
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