“By doing what they must do to keep their margins strong and their stock price healthy, every company paves the way for its own disruption.”– Clayton M. Christensen This week we continue to look at our disrupters, innovators and adapters in retail – businesses in retail using ominchannel in an innovative way. The businesses that look at changing consumer behaviour, interpretative technologies and above all ask one simple question: What if we approached retail differently? How
could we develop strong business models utilising new formations of paths to purchase and, by way of example, the burgeoning power of social media is one prime example of enabling and translating peer group preference into peer group purchasing.
We are moving quickly into the journey from e-commerce to s-commerce. Influencing and ultimately referral and selling experience that is s-commerce will change retail errantly.
With everyone from the Queen to Kim Kardashian’s new baby holding a twitter account, we are helping our retail clients young and old, big and small make social media a key platform in their omnichannel strategy for 2016.
Social media is moving quickly towards being a primary shopping function for today’s connected consumers as browsing social media feeds becomes a daily habit in our lives, combined with our need for social approval and acceptance. This influence is clear when we see that up to 81 per cent of consumers receive advice from friends and family relating to a product purchase through a social networking site.
To support this, a recent research report by DigitasLBi highlighted this impact of social media, reporting that Facebook affected the shopping behaviour of more than half (52 per cent) of the respondents, up from 36 per cent in 2014; while Pinterest influences 46 per cent of consumers and Twitter affects 36 per cent.
How do successful and disruptive retailers harness this power to carve out their own niche? One such example is Tiger Mist.
Over the past nine years Tiger Mist has grown from a retail boutique in the suburbs of Melbourne to a highly successful international online retailer and fashion wholesaler. This savvy retailer is a leader in active social media engagement with 15-25 year olds as their target market.
The brand has more than one million followers across its social networks, with 191+K on Facebook and 530K+ on Instagram alone.
Tiger Mist invests heavily in both models and photographers to ensure that images used on the website and social media platforms have global appeal. Most notably was this ‘pureplay’ retailer’s engagement with Myer, placing their product in 63 Myer stores. The desired ‘mash up’ between an online retailer fuelled by social media engagement, merging with an established bricks and mortar retailer in Myer.
The concept of “fan” normally belongs to the domain of actors and musicians but is now applying to retailers. Tiger Mist is disrupting the conventional. And the conventional, Myer, is disrupting its offer to accommodate Tiger Mist.
Join us in March 2016 at our next Fit for Business briefing featuring Guy Russo, CEO of Kmart Australia, on the topic of transformational retail. Details at www.retaildoctor.com.au.
Retail consultant and advisor, Brian Walker is founder and CEO of Retail Doctor Group and can be contacted on (02) 9460 2882 or brian@retaildoctor.com.au.
Want more Inside Retail? Subscribe to Inside Retail Weekly now and get our premium print publication delivered to your door every week.