Content Writer
With the online holiday shopping frenzy just around the corner, Bond announced our truly exciting partnership with Uber Direct, Uber’s retail-focused delivery service that just launched in Canada.
Holding on to customer loyalty will be a steep hill to climb as the sale of MEC will see it become a privatized company. This is a critical change to the type of business MEC had promised its customers who essentially are their owners – taking away their democratic decisioning power and putting its core promise of a socially conscious retailer at risk.
As consumers, our grocery shopping behaviors and experiences have been drastically altered as a result of COVID-19. Grocers have had to make unprecedented changes to the shopping experience in order to safeguard their employees and customers. Unsurprisingly, it is expected that many of these changes will continue to persist and that new ones will form in a post COVID-19 era. Many believe that the grocery experience that we know and have come to take for granted, will be forever changed, as a result of the pandemic.
In order to understand which behaviors and experiences will stick and what else we can expect to change in a post COVID-19 world, it is important to first examine how consumers have been impacted during the pandemic, and what new realities have dramatically changed the current grocery shopping journey.
In many cases, the distance between the offices of marketing and the operations staff is too far. When it comes to loyalty programs, Marketers can fall into the trap of missing executional realities—including the ability to turn front-line staff into evangelical brand ambassadors.
Neglecting to include front-line representatives and other key stakeholders early in the loyalty program design process can lead to poor promotional execution of campaigns, unchecked accountability and other issues. There also can be a lack of clarity and continuity of expectations, especially with new hires. Then, as competing business priorities arise, the program becomes little more than a sideshow over time.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Our recent Loyalty360/Bond Brand Loyalty webinar, “Measure Twice, Cut Once—Get it Right From the Start!” provided a case study of a leading North American retailer whose loyalty program has set an industry gold standard. It’s not just that enrollment goals for the entire first year were met within the first month. It’s also that front-line staff were and continue to be enthusiastic participants themselves, continuing to create excitement, share tips and engender loyalty with customers.
Content Writer
The Internet has spoken – and it isn’t pretty. Turns out Amazon’s hyped up exclusive "Prime Day" event for Amazon Prime members failed to impress, leaving the “tens of millions" of members feeling a little slighted. Not to mention, the bad impression on the browsing non-members Amazon was attempting to court.
Buzzfeed was quick to publish this article with some of the best Internet responses. Of course, that was just the beginning. #PrimeDay trended on Twitter throughout the day with users even creating a second hashtag: #PrimeDayFail.
There is no debate. Retail has largely been an anonymous and aggregate game. The public sale is pervasive and perpetual, and the arms race to deeper discounts was in full swing during the holidays. But, some of this past season’s sales results suggest there may be fatigue in this model. Our recent Holiday Study suggests that good old brand loyalty may play a more important role in holiday shopping than previously believed. With over 40% of a retailer’s sales happening during the holidays, it’s a critical time to attract new customers, but also key is to focus on retaining existing customers who often account for 55-70% of sales.
It’s that time of the year again! Summer is coming to a close and that can only mean back to school and back to campus. While this can be an exciting time of the year for students, with total spending on back-to-school items expected to reach $74.9 billion, it's also a huge time for retail brands. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) report that breaks down into $26.5 billion for back to school (BTS) and $48.4 billion for back to campus (BTC) shoppers.
Last month a Sobeys Urban Fresh location on busy Bloor St in Toronto closed its doors. Sobeys reported that they are closing 15 of their smaller format locations in addition to 35 other larger stores across the country.