The Society for Location Analysis
Targeting customers in a multi-channel retail environment
Date: Wednesday 20th April 2005
The second Society for Location Analysis (SLA) meeting of 2005 was a very interesting and lively evening enjoyed by the eighteen delegates who travelled to Link House, B&Q, Eastleigh, Southampton. The seminar took place on the third floor on a sunny evening with fantastic views across Hampshire!
Peter Sleight, Chairman of the SLA chaired the evening, sharing firstly an article from Marketing Week 14th April, entitled "Consumers and e-tail begin to click". The article examined trends towards more consumers shopping online. Retailers should be providing a multi-channel retail environment, very appropriate to the evenings session.
Steve Scholey, Site Research Manager at B&Q began the presentation by exploring how B&Q segment their customers and how they target each group. Interestingly some customers are categorised as Catalysts, eg. those who encourage DIY to be done in the home, and who may not participate in the actual DIY themselves! One of the big challenges for B&Q is how to ensure that customers find what they want in such large stores, and also discover things they didn’t know they needed! Better signage and positioning, in-store cafes and seating are just a few of the ways B&Q are trying to address this. Their East Kilbride store is trialling this new store layout.
Amie Burton, Home Delivery Customer Communications Manager at B&Q introduced a fascinating insight into how B&Q’s online business is managed. The battle to acquire, retain and keep customers who visit their website is a very challenging problem.
It was also interesting to note that many customers who purchase through the website have also visited the store to see products before buying.
Questions from delegates included:
- How do you manage the balance between store managers losing a sale from someone who visits a store and who then goes home to order online at their convenience?
- With online purchases, do you know which store they have visited?
- How do you know who is a trade buyer?
- How do you target family groups?
- Do B&Q force registration online to allow easy tracking and to build up a customer database?
The Society for Location Analysis would like to thank B&Q for presenting, hosting and providing the refreshments for this excellent networking evening. We would also like to thank Peter Sleight for chairing and all the members who attended and helped to make this event a lively and interesting networking experience.
Peter Sleight commented, "Thanks for an excellent presentation. The event was very well organised (and catered!) and the presentations were well presented and intrinsically interesting".
Delegates included representatives from B&Q, Barclays Bank, Homebase, John Lewis, King Sturge, Safeway, Target Market Consultancy, West Sussex County Council, Woolwich, Woolworths, Ordnance Survey and Middlesex University Business School.
A: 1 Holly Court, Tring Road, Wendover, Bucks, HP22 6PE
T: 01296 622555
F: 01296 622118
E: info@thesla.org
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