For all retailers big and small…..

1. If you remove it, I won’t come.

For two years a retailer stocked my magazine, the American title that was difficult to get hold of and didn’t make sense to pay more to get it on subscription.

So when said retailer removes the title full well knowing I bought it, well it no longer makes sense to me. And it’s not a case of my £4.95 a month it’s more a case £4.95 x 4.85 (the factor that me and the rest of the family spend on average when we “pop in”).

2. Give me a mechanism to order and I will.

Bookshops I browse in, I’ll talk to the staff and see how they are and all that schizz but I rarely order via the staff. Bookshops give me the issue of want vs need (do I want it, or do I need it) that’s where my snap purchase decision comes from.

For all the complaints of “show rooming” where I can order from the evil anti retailer Amazon no one seems to be making a good job of removing the barriers of me going to Amazon to purchase.  You know what, if there was a system to order and pay I’d probably use it.

So minus fun from the large book retailer that removed their computers to browse stock and order…. and probably lost about £300 of my trade in the process.

3. Centralised Retail Will Kill “Shop Local”

Take any large retailer and put them in your local high street, they are now shop local. I can go there, peruse and purchase. What’s lacking is data focus, a lack of focus on the small changes from store to store and not the holistic whole.

For any shop local thing to work it’s down to the location, the customers and the data to hand, working collaboratively. Without that the whole thing is a non starter.

Large retail should be sharing data to entice, enlarge and excite the high street locally, they have the data and the money to do it. Actually it could be done rather cheaply.

4. All Your Deals Suck

Most loyalty cards aren’t worth the card or plastic they are printed on. These data rich devices hold some serious keys to behaviour but if you can’t be bothered to analyse them then why bother having it. If you can’t analyse it then ask someone. It’s been a long while since I mentioned Groupon, the long hours of explaining to retailers how it would kill their bottom line and then some.

Failing to analyse your own rich data is a path to retail failure. By now we should be in a position of personalised loyalty, you want to know about me fine but I expect something in return. I’m not into points, I’m in to customer relationships.