Good morning: Let’s talk about retail

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Good morning, Marketers, are you thinking about retail?

And for marketers working in a retail organization, are you thinking about brands?

The digital landscape shortens the traditional consumer buying journey, and this brings each point in the journey into closer contact with the others. The slow spread of brand awareness activated by, for instance, CPG products, is quickened by the many possible endpoints in the journey, whether they are traditional brick-and-mortar grocers, or e-commerce stores like Amazon.

These journeys are often quicker and digitized. Brands keep hold of the digital experience by upping their digital ad spend. Retailers, online and traditional, maintain their relevance by providing opportunities for brands to serve these ads and cut through and expand awareness in front of customers.

But whose customers are they really? They are in many ways empowered free agents, less loyal to specific product and retail brands, more intent on saving money and participating in meaningful causes outside of the strict sale. This makes customer experience a highly contested journey between brands, retailers and publishers. In the digital realm, the lines between these three cohorts are blurring.

Chris Wood,

Editor

Shorts

Quote of the day: “This year, the grocers that rise to the top will be those that own the digital relationships with their customers and give CPG brands the ability to offer dynamic ad placements giving customers an ultra-personalized shopping experience both online and in-store.” Sean Turner, chief technology officer for digital loyalty platform Swiftly

About The Author

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.