Author: Sara Edwards

Visit Stibo Systems in Booth 3974

Participants will focus on how retail technology enhances the customer experience during National Retail Federation’s (NRF) BIG Show Jan. 11-14 at the Javits Center in New York.

Keynote presentations will set the tone. The Brick is the New Black: Reinventing the Brick-and-Mortar Experience session will explore how retailers can reposition brick-and-mortar stores to be at the center of the customer experience.

We have discussed PIM’s role as a customer-facing system and how PIM can assist with the creation of effective product content but we haven’t addressed how a company knows when an investment in Product Information Management (PIM) technology makes sense.

Last time we discussed why PIM is a customer-facing system. In this post, we’re going to discuss what effective product information looks like and why so many companies don’t have it.

The path to a productive relationship with your customers runs straight through customer service, the customer’s cross-channel experience with your brand and your product content. This is particularly true online where the customer experience of your brand is a function of implementation decisions you and your team have made. For example, what product information do you expose on your Product Detail Page (PDP)? Most retailers understand that the PDP represents the physical product for the online shopper and that compelling product content is needed to ‘romance’ the product. So, while a great product description and a single image repurposed from a catalog were ‘compelling’ in 2000, today’s consumers and B2B end-users expect more, including:

Let me start by setting the scene.

You suddenly find yourself needing a product, maybe a certain pair of shoes. On your laptop, you check out your favourite fashion shop and note they have just the pair you want. However, you decide to visit their brick-and-mortar store to try on sizes. Once there, you can’t seem to find the shoes in your size so you of course ask the in-store sales assistant for help, who tells you that they are sold out.

There are some that do it average, some not so well, and those that do it exceptionally well. Retailers that are experiencing growth year after year and are able to compete with Amazon are the ones that are doing it exceptionally well.