BizAims

According to Irwin Kramer, who holds the position of chief executive of iCongo, an e-commerce solutions provider, retailers should take advantage of the economic crisis in order to get ahead of their rival. It is crucial to remember that the future positioning of your e-business depends a lot on inventory optimization and improvement of customer service system. Within a weak economy the majority of retailers suffer from slump in economy.

As a rule, while consumers restrain in spending, a slump in economy doesn't have the same impact among all retailers. There are several factors that determine the downturn. Some of these factors are the geographic location of stores, the categories of products that are being sold and particular market segments. If retailers want to stay afloat within a tightening economy, they must pay attention on their short- and long-term objectives.

Although the economy is currently not in a good shape, it is advised that retailers carry on exploring investments in technologies that offer improved customer service and optimize operational efficiencies, which could help retailers improve their competitive position on the market. It is worth mentioning that the power of e-commerce systems of retailers can have both positive and negative outcome, i.e. it may generate or shatter profit margins during harsh times.

There may be a lot of opinions on what should retailers focus more during a downturn in economy. Here are some of them:

 - increase sakes potential;

 - efficient planning and inventory monitoring;

- raising efficiencies to lower costs;

- develop customer loyalty.

In order to be able to accomplish the upper mentioned objectives, retailers ought to move as fast as possible. If they are able to perform an effective implementation of these objectives, they will be able to improve their sales throughout the economic downturn and at the same time they will boost their competitive positioning during the economic upturn.

In addition to the strategies aimed to improve physical stores, retailers should pay a lot of attention to e-commerce and cross-channel and marketing strategies. Besides, they should focus on systems to improve inventory levels. Quite often these strategies are not taken into consideration, but statistics show that those who had success in implementing them registered notable results.

During a downturn in an economy, those retailers who look forward to improve their sales potential should apply effective marketing techniques and strategies that will help dodge lost sales opportunities. No doubt that during a slowdown in the economy, a lot of stores face a decrease in the number of customers and it becomes crucial for them to make every new customer buy a certain product. When, for instance, a customer visits a store, whether it's physical or online store, there should be no problem with finding a product the customer wishes to purchase. For this reason it is important to apply systems that could optimize their sales and inventory channels.

It is important to have the inventory of the whole chain in order to satisfy customer's demand. Having the inventory at a certain store or a particular warehouse location designed to complete an order in simply not enough. Let's be more practical: when a customer pays a visit to a certain store and hopes to acquire that is not currently available at the visited store, it is important for the retailer to have cross-channel systems prepared to be able to be up-to-date of the place where the product, the customer is looking for, is located, so it would be easy to make the sale and provide a fast delivery of the product straight to customer's home or for pick-up right at the store. In this case retailers will not lose a potential customer and thus a potential sale. In addition, if the retailer wants to assure a well-organized picking, packing, shipping and tracking of the customer's order, there should be an order management system. Thus documents necessary for picking, shipping and invoice are automatically made and the order can be shipped quicker with the help of scanning devices.

In the same way the inventory that a retailer uses for an e-commerce website should be based on inventory throughout the whole chain, instead of being based only on inventory in the warehouse. Thus the retailer will be able to significantly increase the chances of completing the sale. Besides, it will also guarantee that inventory at store locations throughout the entire chain can satisfy online sales in case the warehouse, which usually brings inventory for the store, is out of stock.

Harris Interactive, a market research company in the United States that focuses on public opinion research via telephone and online surveys, carried out a survey that showed that six percent of customers who visit a store reported that they would most likely complete an acquisition for delivery to their home or to the store in case the store did not have the required product.

There is a direct link between success and effective customer acquisition strategies. The latter is a great weapon of attracting new customers to stores. It is quite effective to apply online marketing to reach customers. It's no secret that online marketing is rather inexpensive and if planned and performed correctly it may provide a huge benefit.

If a retailer wants to achieve success in marketing to customers, it is important to be aware of the attributes and behaviors of customer base in order to be able to manage personalized marketing campaigns aimed to particular customer features. Usually these features include:

- the development of specific marketing campaigns aimed to a particular type of client;

- providing loyalty programs in order to reward loyal customers and increase repeat sales;

- monitoring the effects of each marketing campaign and improving future campaigns according to earlier experience;

- collecting information regarding the shopping activities of customers (feedback, last purchase date, returns and causes for rejection of an online purchase);

- tracking regularly customer feedback to estimate the performance of the store.

It is important to know that the current downturn of the economy will not last forever, which is why it is important to continue making smart decisions now in order to register increased sales.