Omnichannel

Consumers love to shop and love using social media, but somehow the two passions are not connecting.
 
Twitter, which has been piloting an embedded buy button in tweets since September 2014, is abandoning the effort. Recent studies from Forrester and GlobalWebIndex indicate generally low consumer usage rates for social buy buttons, which are also offered by platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.
 

Marc’s, a 58-store deep-discounter of grocery, health and beauty products and other items, is providing targeted recommendations with help from national partners.   The Cleveland-based retailer is teaming up with Allrecipes to introduce in-store beacon-triggered experiences that provide shoppers with personalized meal recommendations through the Allrecipes Dinner Spinner app. In-store notifications are triggered on shoppers’ smartphones by a Verifone beacon system running on the Footmarks SmartConnect proximity platform.

Customers know what prompts them to make purchases, but the companies doing the selling may not be aware.

A global, cross-industry study released by technology services provider Mindtree, “Winning in the Age of Personalization,” shows that 78% of consumers indicate that personalized promotions encourage them to buy products and services they have purchased before. Almost as many (74%) say personalized promotions encourage them buy relevant products and services they have never purchased.

Consumers love to shop and love using social media, but somehow the two passions are not connecting.
 
Twitter, which has been piloting an embedded buy button in tweets since September 2014, is abandoning the effort. Recent studies from Forrester and GlobalWebIndex indicate generally low consumer usage rates for social buy buttons, which are also offered by platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.
 

By removing manual effort from the checkout and cash management processes in stores, Sunbury, Pennsylvania-based supermarket chain Weis Markets Inc. is making shopping easier.

Weis Markets has signed an agreement with Balance Innovations to provide its vbScout self-checkout management solution in all stores offering self-checkout, as well as VeriBalance currency management software and vbInSight corporate reporting software in all 162 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and West Virginia.

Increasingly, retailers are recognizing the need to remove boundaries between channels to maximize customer satisfaction.
 
According to the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey from Boston Retail Partners, 51% of retailers indicate that creating a seamless experience across channels is their top priority. To support a seamless customer experience, 23% of the retailers surveyed have already implemented a single, unified commerce platform and another 52% plan to implement one within the next three years.
 

Staples is bringing the mobile and in-store shopping experiences a little closer together.

The office products giant is releasing a new interactive store map feature on its iPhone app. Currently, the offering is being piloted at 83 select stores across New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and the Seattle area.

Retailers are fairly good about making sure buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) orders are ready in a timely manner, but lacking in other aspects.

According to a new mystery shopping study of the BOPIS offerings of 30 major retailers from omnichannel commerce platform Kibo, the e-tailing group and Multichannel Merchant, “Unified Commerce and the Customer Experience,” 75% of retailers evaluated had orders ready for pickup within 24 hours.