An interesting article and there are arguments for both in all product categories.
I agree wholeheartedly that retail businesses need to do more than just hire more digital & e-commerce people to 'drive online sales' (a phrase I hear all the time in job briefs!)
Of course this is important, but a cohesive and more joined up approach between the two is what's needed - how can mobile make more of an impact? How can retail stores innovate further and improve:
a) their customer experience and
b) their customer offering, sales, promotions etc...?
And how will they differentiate between the two?
It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next 12 months or so with the likes of Debenhams and House of Fraser and to ultimately see how retailers will adapt to uncertain times ahead.
With soaring high street store closures still making the headlines on a regular basis in the UK, the retail and marketing sectors repeatedly grapple with the question: why are high street retailers still struggling to crack multi-channel retail? While employing e-commerce best practices and focusing on customer experience might seem like straightforward measures to those of us who work in digital, the woes of high street retailers are quite obviously not straightforward.
Read the original article here