Franchise marketing consultants from NKA Marketing Agency discuss multi-channel retailing

Retail marketing agency NKA has published the results of a series of interviews the franchise marketing consultants conducted with retail industry stakeholders, intended to gauge their attitudes and intentions to initiate multi-channel retailing.

With online retail sales set to double by 2015, the franchise marketing consultants caution that retailers will need to develop dynamic responses to the challenge of this new retailer model, and to counter the loss of incidental customer uptake afforded by pre-existing physical retail locations.

NKA interviewed retail industry stakeholders in metropolitan NSW to discuss this new multi-channel retailing model, speaking with:

• franchise and licensee CEOs
• multiple store company retailers
• retail store owners; and
• marketing managers for multi-national enterprises in the retail sector.

Retail companies in the higher turnover category also had a 30% greater propensity to be implementing new online retail strategies within the next twelve months.

These online channel campaigns include:

• direct sales portals
• rewarding customers
• interacting with customers
• national sales promotion fulfillment
• establishing an affinity channel (and co-branding campaigns); and
• cross selling and upselling product lines and extensions.

75% of retail stakeholders believed that their online channel strategy could better improve their retail sales capability when involving their front line customer services staff.

Finally, 70% of stakeholders interviewed who are currently rewarding customers for utilizing online sales channels believed the communication and promotion of their online value proposition could be supported more intensely in their retail model.

These interviews demonstrate that online, multi-channel retailing is becoming a significant consideration for retail stakeholders. NKA franchise marketing consultants recommend that retailers adopt a methodological approach to respond to these changing consumer dynamics, by establishing a clearly defined brand proposition.

NKA offers a range of marketing campaigns for franchise systems across Australia, with a particular focus on new and developing strategies in online marketing.