Today's shoppers go online to research locations, compare prices or read reviews before they go to a store, and as soon as they are back home, they post details about their shopping experience on Facebook or other social media platforms. Online agencies rave about viral campaigns, guerrilla marketing and 360° communication. IT specialists are peddling one-to-one marketing tools and integrated customer data warehousing solutions. Should retailers care about any of this? The authors of this book firmly believe that they should – but in an environment of accelerating change, even veterans of the retail trade are looking for guidance on how to embrace the challenges thrown up by the evolving retail marketing landscape: How do I combine traditional and new marketing vehicles? How can I stay on top of what my customers want? How can I reach them efficiently? Do they still look at leaflets, or should I shift local marketing funds to social media? How can I leverage unique retail touch points, such as the POS, for value creation? Successful retail management might once have been about ‘just doing it’, but that is no longer the case. This book offers retail professionals practical and robust ways to improve the performance of their marketing function and align marketing investments with business objectives. This book consolidates the know-how of more than 30 practitioners in the field, created and refined over many years together with leading international companies. It covers some of the latest and most sophisticated approaches to the subject, yet it is anything but a theoretical treatise. The authors' hands-on approach and the wealth of case examples make it an essential guide for all consumer-minded retailers. (from the Foreword by Dr Klaus Behrenbeck, Director, McKinsey & Company, Inc., Leader Consumer Industries & Retail Group, Europe)
