The keys to the omni-channel retail kingdom

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the January-February 2023 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

January-February 2023

It feels like a normal holiday season. ”That was the report I got from the VP of global distribution at one of the country’s best known retail brands on the Monday before Black Friday. He added that the last time he felt that way was November of 2019. One of the perks of this job is that I get to talk to a lot of supply chain executives. In my conversations over the last year, I’ve learned two things. Operations, which was perhaps hardest hit at the start of the pandemic, has learned to operate in this new environment. Sure, there are still hiccups caused by absenteeism and inventory shortages. But those are situational—give them supply and…

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It’s fairly clear that the most powerful word for retail consumers today is convenience. The only trouble is that consumer convenience comes in a staggering number of different forms. Consider just a few: store shopping; e-commerce shopping; online marketplaces; direct-to-consumer; omni-channel; BOPIS; curbside pickup; contactless pickup; 30-minute pickup; two-hour pickup or delivery; same day delivery.

And, that’s not even a complete list. What’s more, a number of those offerings didn’t even exist at scale prior to the pandemic-related lockdown in March of 2022 that forced everyone serving the public to come up with new and innovative models to take care of their customers. They may be convenient for shoppers, but nothing here has made life any easier for retailers. Quite the opposite.

That said, consumer expectations are quite high but summarized simply, says Ann Ruckstuhl, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Manhattan Associates. All consumers want is: Know me, serve me and don’t waste my time.

Those three expectations, are based on a survey Manhattan did of 3,500 adults in the United States and five European countries, says Ruckstuhl.

And to confirm what you already suspect; U.S. consumers are more impatient and demanding than those in other countries. “They want everything to be faster, they want to be able to buy anywhere and they want to receive their order faster,” says Ruckstuhl.

Whether their order is filled from an e-commerce distribution center or a store is of no great concern to them. They still want what they want. When they want it. And they expect every experience to be seamless.

Just to be clear, we are all co-conspirators here. These trends are multi-generational and it’s happening simultaneously across physical and digital retail. Ruckstuhl says “shopping habits have changed forever as consumers have truly become phygital.”

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