Digital Earthquake
Today’s incredible success and adoption of mobile telecommunications and technology have created an intersection between the historical parallel, and sometime conflicting, “off-line vs on-line” marketing and sales strategies.
During the first decades of adoption, companies, in particular in the retail sector, thought that Internet was a new “marketing and sales channel” to be used for selling those products which were not premium or did not deserve a “particular” care or attention on the “shelves” of physical stores. In other words, it was considered as an alternative channel to the traditional “off-line” one.
So, “inventory-stocks” (term used for indicating products remained unsold in the inventories) sales web-sites started to flourish as mushrooms, with “smart” entrepreneurs, understanding the incredible importance of the new “digital” channel, who went to the big and more famous “off-line” retail companies making them a simple but effective business propositions:” do you want to get rid of all these immense inventories making money?”.
You can imagine which was the answer. If you are interested more on these dynamics, read how Internet has revolutionized client-company relationship.
But this was just the sun-set of Internet era. Everything has changed again, and the middle-ages of Internet have terminated.
Now, the two channels, digital and physical, are not anymore two siblings of different parents, but they become conjoined twins who need each other to live.
Today, thanks (in particular) to mobile technology and its intrinsic “ease of use” (if you are interested on mobile technology evolution read my article on “Steve Jobs’ inheritance”), the easy access to information not only affect sales in digital channels, but has a wider and deeper impact on how final consumer and shopper behaves inside any “physical store”.
If you’re more interested on how “digital force” has reshaped “retail industry”, please take a look to this article “The invisible force which is disrupting the Retail Industry”
