Smart Research Strategies for Retail Growth

We selected three cases that capture the importance of understanding customer shopping strategy, supporting customers through multi-channel marketing, and improving the brand shopping experience.

Support Dealers and Consumers with Web-to-Store Strategy: Waterford Wedgwood, WedgwoodUSA.com

Waterford Wedgwood, familiar and highly regarded makers of crystal and china, traditionally sold their wares exclusively through a retailer network. In 2002 the company started selling Waterford crystal online to buyers and, based on that experience, created and launched WedgwoodUSA.com to showcase and sell its fine china, gifts, and replacement pieces online.

Their experience with Waterford enabled the company to develop a promising dual-channel strategy. (See Figure 7.3.)

Figure 7.3. Wedgwood’s capable site search allows consumers to explore and research the full Wedgwood catalog online, and then offers consumers options to buy online or to find a local retailer.

Wedgwood retailers typically carry part of their line. Store size, shelf space limitations, specialization, and customer profiles all conspire to reduce the types and patterns for display. Incorporating the entire catalog, Wedgwood’s e-commerce partner says, “[lets] people do a lot of research online before they order online or get to a store. Consumers report that ...

Get The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from The Advertising Research Foundation now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.