Romanian Retail Convention: “Do. Or do not . There is no try.”
One of the problems in retail, is the “tail”. The queues from the hypermarkets cash registers are an indicator of the current consumer experience offered by Romanian retailers, an indicator of the system irregularities: slow cash-flows, slow stock-flows, rigid and outdated databases, poor logic of product placements on the shelves or simplistic targeting processes.
At Romanian Retail Convention (November 21st, Bucharest), speakers and participants from a diverse range of specialties tried to come up with solutions focused on technological upgrades. For example, it was discussed the advantage of implementing electronic labels, which besides saving resources and manpower – the labels won’t be printed anymore and employees will not lose time to replace the old labels – will enable the capacity of updating prices in real time.
Representatives from the banking sector talked about the new “contactless” cards, which are to be faster than the traditional cards and will encourage card payment even for small valued acquisitions.
The presence of retailers in the online environment is not new, but the creation of strategies for mobile advertising could be an innovative solution, given the fact that most customers complain about the lack of time for shopping, while the phone is a device always within reach. One good tactic is to use geo-location or daytime targeting, to attract customers who are already close to the store.
Cross-selling, which is the science of proper settlement of products on the shelves according to the consumer logic, was another issue to be discussed. This logic varies depending on many factors, so in order to make an effective cross-selling process a retailer needs local insights.
Superficial targeting leads to ridiculous results. For example, Prince Charles and Ozzie Osbourne have the same consumer profile because they are born in the same year, they have the same number of children and the value of their fortunes is similar. To avoid such mistakes, the targeting process should be complex.
Updating databases and obtaining relevant data from it, introducing smart discount coupons, active listening to employees and clients feedback or implementation of storytelling in the communication strategies are also solutions proposed at Romanian Retail Convention.
All the discussed solutions, either based on technology innovation, either on a more efficient resources management, converge towards the same imperative – to know as much as possible about the person behind the receipt, for the receipt to exist.
The conference concluded with study-cases awarded at Cannes Lions, presented by Teo Migdalovici, the festival’s ambassador in Romania.
Material written by Lucian Talpes