»  Shoppercentricity

As another sign that retailers are looking for ways to adapt and adopt new technologies, Express has announced they will make their whole clothing catalog available on Facebook. As Jim Wright, SPV of CRM and e-commerce at Express explains, “If you look at what's happening today, top-down marketing and driving people to places to transact has changed. We need to be where customers are having their experiences and sharing information. We need to take down the barriers preventing a shopping experience.”

Did you catch that important shift? Retailers can no longer afford to wait for shoppers to come to them - they have to be where their shoppers are. Technology, in this instance Facebook, has brought about the means for retail marketing to evolve beyond the traditional four walls of the store. The result is a whole new world of retail. 

The article goes on to quote Patti Freeman Evans, VP and research director at Forrester Research as saying experimenting with social commerce is valuable for retailers even if it doesn't drive direct sales. Why? Because retailers “get insight into customers that are much more intimate. Retailers can pull those insights and turn them into analytics and use those analytics on their website to make recommendations to customers based on friends' purchases.”

The implications are far reaching. You have to be where your shoppers are to get the shopper insights you need to stay relevant. Even if that means being willing to experiment with new ways of being where your shoppers are.