Strong Winds of Change Are Blowing through the Retail Industry

Guest blog post by Joanie Abraham, president of StyleBranding, Inc.

Two major market forces are blowing their weight around the retail industry:

- Retail brands are slowing their store expansion plans, modifying their assortments, cutting their stock substantially and becoming more focused in their offering to consumers.

- Social media and the technology available to us today are resulting in enhanced customer experiences and engagement with the brand. Video merchandising is the new buzz word on the web.

This impact on the industry is putting even more importance on the website as brand representative or "brand central" as I refer to it; how the retailer or designer presents the brand to the global public. It is becoming even more influential now that store expansion is slowing because it offers access to the brand to a much broader audience.

The experience the consumer is offered within the "selling environment" of the web is what engages the consumer both emotionally and financially. For the last couple of weeks, I have received a white paper a day talking about the enhanced response rate and increased sales retailers are getting from using video on their websites. Video merchandising is going to put the creativity back into retailing.

Video creates the experience on the site. The myriad of technological offerings from apps on iPhones to YouTube to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace allows for customer involvement. Our job is to use the technology to create the aspirational fantasy your brand represents to the consumer: the fantasy that style and product acquisition are all about.

If major retail brands with dozens to hundreds of store fronts, would take half of their real estate budgets and apply them to online advertising and site enhancement, the sales would keep the brand active and alive in the minds of a much broader audience than one store possibly could.

The sooner the retail industry adapts these trends into their business model the sooner the energy will begin pouring back into the brand in the minds of their consumers and the general web world at large.