Charteris Multichannel Retail Survey 2008 Results

For retailers, addressing the challenges facing them isn't as straightforward as it may seem. Both leveraging existing assets and embedding customer centricity in decision making are easier said than done.

This point is clearly highlighted by a recent study Charteris did on Multi-Channel Retailing in the UK. We spoke to 32 multi-channel UK retailers covering all the main retail sectors, with total sales exceeding £41bn. Retailers scored themselves in 6 areas…

1. Strategy
2. People
3. Processes
4. Information
5. Metrics
6. Technology

What we found is that retailers currently face a lot of challenges, with only metrics scoring acceptably in the survey.

The lowest scores across were in these six areas.

1. Responding to customer needs
2. Improving customer experience
3. Leveraging Existing Systems
4. Integrating Existing Systems
5. Shifting from a product focus to a customer-centric culture
6. Shifting to a cross-channel culture

We can aggregate these to highlight three key problem areas that we feel retailers should be focusing on

1. Changing culture
2. Doing more with existing assets
3. Linking assets together