Retail Industry – A Quick Look

With a quick look let’s see some of the key trends in consumer behavior and the retail industry in recent times. Three deepening trends in Consumer Behavior:

Customers are becoming more demanding – Due to the Web revolution consumers started sharing their opinion/thought through the forum. It makes them much more demanding and expects more out of a product.

Social Media online is exploding – It is becoming a key vehicle for both strategic marketing and customer engagement.

Premium products and services still sell well and Green is becoming iconic – Many of the less price sensitive consumers are still highly style and status conscious, and consumers are going to increasingly great lengths to boycott brands that have poor eco-credentials

These are the consumer trends impacting the Retail Industry. So, now the question is how about the Retail Industry in general?

Three deepening Trends in the Retail Industry:

The credit crunch is getting worse – It negatively impacting retailer profits.

The e-channel is still growing fast – Online spending increasing very fast and tendency of consumer is leaning towards e-channel. Retailers are expecting a major shift to online as well as oppose to the store.

The leaders are merging channels – and providing seamless brand and customer experiences across them all. Consumers in return are becoming rapidly less tolerant of pricing, availability or service differentials online and offline.