Competing, Connecting, and Winning in Today s Distribution and Merchandising

While being in a hurry to complete tasks, both customers and customer professionals are valuing when things are done better and quicker. The necessary data science skills of the customer professionals have become a must have, their operations and future strategies being guided through the application of analytics on these data, the challenge remaining to translate customer insights into business operations. Retailers are seeing how the less distinct line between online and brick-and-mortar is becoming more and more evident, and how Amazon is putting more pressure on traditional retail than ever, while Walmart is working on the way of bringing the physical store directly into consumers homes. And facing the continuous challenge of building brand loyalty and advocacy retailers are also focusing on improving their stores value proposition and their stores merchandising, on enhancing Omni channel customer experience by defining accordingly their digital supply chain vision, without forgetting to successfully managing collaborative initiatives to improve shared supply chain processes that benefit all members. They really need to struggle to prevent friction in their customers journey, to identify where breaks are in this journey and to make consumers seen the benefit in having a personal link with a brand, what involves, among other aspects, to know the most critical brand equities and touchpoints for that battleground called the moment of purchase , making distinction between the initial consideration and the final consideration, having actionable data (pre-store, in-store, and post-store).