The Clicks-and-Bricks Evolution
Consumers want choices. They are adding e-commerce to their stable of shopping venues, but they aren't abandoning catalogs or bricks-and-mortar stores.
By Kenneth Nisch -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 11/1/2000
If you picked up any business magazine just one year ago, you most likely read about the death of conventional retail and catalog businesses. E-commerce was the wave of the future, capturing the hearts, minds, and wallets of every consumer with ever more ambitious business plans. Start-up e-commerce companies abounded, and manufacturers touted their new direct-to-consumer Internet channels.
At the end of the day, however, there were a number of things that many dot-coms had failed to realize:
1) Retail isn't easy. 2) With a few exceptions, consumption is about wants, not needs. 3) A large percentage of consumer purchases are related to gifting, an area in which the image and the thought are every bit as important as the deal. 4) The experience matters: Cookies smell better at the bakery, coffee smells richer in a Starbucks, and flowers smell their prettiest at a florist's. These are some of the reasons that consumers haven't taken to e-commerce in the numbers that the business magazines said they would just a year ago. They are also the reasons that so many consumer Web sites have either failed or sold out to a competitor.
However, there are still a number of Internet success stories, and they illustrate why e-commerce isn't going away. Here are some of the reasons:
If it's free, they will come: The brand-building e-stationery Web site Blue Mountain Arts is one of the most trafficked sites on the Web.
If it's interesting or exotic, they will come: Successful online auction house eBay provides consumers with an adventurous experience.
If it's a one-of-a-kind, they will come: Pioneering e-retailer Amazon.com continues to grow on a large scale. It recently added toys and autos to its merchandise mix.
Offering Choices
But these successful Internet commerce sites still have not done away with conventional retailing. Consumers aren't opting for one retail distribution channel over another. Instead, they are saying, "We want multiple ports of access to information and product, and on any given day we may use all of them." The result is that both e-commerce and everyday commerce are right. Clicks-and-bricks is the wave of the future. There are numerous reasons why that is true:
- The expansion of the commercial space far beyond the limitations of the physical space eliminates the need to deal with the compromise of scale vs. cost and location. In other words, e-commerce provides a far larger presence than any amount of conventional retail space can, and location becomes irrelevant.
- With the help of e-commerce, retailers can create micromarkets defined by size, style, or taste. Every consumer can be satisfied.
- Consumers are hungry for information about products and their value-added aspects. This information is often difficult to deliver in a complete and consistent way at the store level, but can be easily delivered on a Web site.
- And, finally, clicks-and-bricks is hip! (For the time being, at least.)
The Cybermall Concept
Some retailers are maintaining the real aspect of their businesses by making use of the virtual. They are creating a hybrid clicks-and-bricks organization.
A dramatic expression of this concept is the new Dickson Cyber Express, a 70,000-square-foot interactive shopping mall located in the Kowloon Station transportation center adjacent to the Hong Kong International Airport. Having access to more than 2.4 million visitors a day would be any retailer's dream. However, the facility is limited by space constraints, as well as by very strict safety and transportation regulations.
Dickson's solution was to create a clicks-and-bricks cybermall. The design team turned the retail area's space limitations into an asset by creating a series of distinct shopping zones. These zones-which include E-World, Beauty World, Kiddy World, and Fashion World-are linked through a series of icons and elements that connects the physical mall, Dickson Cyber Express, with the virtual mall, DicksonCyber.com. The cybermall takes advantage of both worlds, by demonstrating products while not necessarily fulfilling orders for them on site, or in other cases, showcasing products and making different sizes and colors available online. Technologies such as on-site publishing, the production of custom CDs, and virtual makeovers further enhance the selling process.
Is this the future? We'll see. For now, however, the fruits of the cyber-revolution have shown us that retailing will never be the same. Multitasking, media layering, instant access, and global supply networks will change tomorrow's stores. Those stores will become points of connectivity and distribution, places of customization and fabrication, resource centers for consumers who won't accept the cookie-cutter goods orüberbrands that currently dominate today's retail marketplace.
However, we are human, and therefore emotional. We're motivated by our senses. Conventional retailers must continue to seek innovative design solutions to reinforce their brand position and products as the primary focus of their stores. They must recognize that retail, beyond its critical role of connecting consumers with goods and services, is a key component in forming consumer attitudes and motivating consumer action. When retailers create an engaging and memorable experience, they turn browsers into buyers. And, while shoppers now have many channels to choose from (bricks, clicks, catalogs, or a creative blend of the three), in the end, this is all to their benefit.
Kenneth Nisch is an architect and the chairman of JGA Inc., a retail design and strategy firm in Southfield, Michigan. In working with clients, Nisch applies his knowledge of consumer markets to create conceptual and prototype development, determine brand image positioning, and establish architectural direction. JGA's clients include Warner Bros., Disney, Rainforest Café, Estée Lauder, Avon, America Online, Dickson CyberExpress, Smithsonian Institution, and the American Museum of Natural History.
