As you may know I teach a capstone business course for CUNY. I help the students a mindset that the world is changing rapidly and they need to get ahead of them, before automation, artificial intelligence, etc. eliminate many of those jobs.
One of the topics we discussed is the interesting competition between the e-commerce leader, e.g., Amazon, as it invades the former territory of retail stores and creates new opportunities, and the actions of the retail stores, e.g., Walmart, to move into the e-commerce space and create new opportunities. The issue isn’t who will win, the issue is how will the new opportunities to serve existing and future customers’ expanded set of needs morph the entire playing field.
Initially, the retail stores simply responded to the ecommerce threat by offering their own version. Then Amazon redefined the playing field to integrate retail and ecommerce, through its purchase of Whole Foods, its experiment with its Amazon stores, and more recently with the experiment of Go stores which offer a cashier-free app-based shopping experience.
Walmart responded by buying Jet.com, to get the expertise and insights of Marc Lore, including his interest in creating greater access to more upscale brands than Walmart has traditionally served. The results are experiments such as the following
- Project Kepler is an effort to “change in-store experiences leveraging emerging technologies to define and deliver on evolving customer expectations”. The goal is to create physical stores that, like Go, will operate without checkout lines or cashiers.
- Code Eight is designed to reach high net worth urban customers, such as busy NYC moms, who they could never reach customers with stores. Allegedly, its goal is to provide them with personal shopping services: product recommendations will be made via text messages for health, beauty, household essentials and apparel/accessories. Walmart also acquired Bonobos to experiment with provide personalized clothing services for men.)
In other word, both sides are not going to fight directly over the turfs they currently dominate (i.e., the “Red Ocean” strategy) but instead to discover new opportunities in terms of markets and products (i.e. “Blue Ocean” strategy. (See: Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan and Mauborgne).
And that’s where all the best opportunities exist for us in 2018 and the future: harnessing the technology and cultural changes taking place and finding new opportunities to serve existing and future clients. How are you doing so? Share your experiences and plans!