Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Anyone who has spent any time following the ecommerce industry and particularly Amazon and Walmart is familiar with the journalism of Jason Del Rey, who spent a decade at Recode documenting the transformation of retail, and also through his podcast Land of the Giants: The Rise of Amazon. He has now come out with a deeply researched and incisive book entitled Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets, and he joined the podcast to share some insights of this most consequential era in retail, and where this clash of the titans might go from here.

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Ecommerce Insider Quarterly report, or EIQ. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast for her takeaways from their Q2 research.

Omnichannel has always felt like an unsatisfying word, maybe slightly better than all the other bad options for describing what we are trying to achieve. Our guest today thinks of it from the consumer lens with the concept of seamless shopping. Michael Klein is a consultant who brings a wealth of experience as a retail buyer and merchandiser, and for the last 14 years at Adobe as Global Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing for Retail, Travel & Consumer Goods sectors. He joined us to talk about what is required for brands and retailers to turn the concept into action.

Wringing the most out of your paid search, organic search, and content excellence programs must be a group activity across all the teams and agencies responsible, or brands risk wasting the investment in any one of them by underperformance in the others. Amanda Wolff, Head of Marketing at Flywheel Digital, joins the podcast with the innovations she has been seeing among leader brands to ensure that these functions are operating more as one, and less as three.

Retailers all over the world are leaning into creating the next generation of store experiences that will drive increasing revenue. Global insight provider IGD recently published an in-depth study on the Stores of the Future that are happening today, centered on 5 themes of emerging trends in the grocery industry. Stewart Samuel, Director of Retail Futures at IGD, joined us on the podcast to lay out a few of the central themes and how the Future of Stores is coming to life today.

In this environment, every brand is evaluating the channels they use and the investments they make to ensure they are getting the most out of their resources. This is certainly true for DTC, whether you are considering beginning a journey there, or for those brands who are in the journey and evaluating their strategy. This is an audio version of a webinar featuring of course Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, and Carter Jensen, Senior Manager Global eCommerce General Mills. Carter and General Mills have been on a three year journey from “DTC is a threat to their traditional business” to running more than 35 sites a year. He generously shares the learnings and advice from that journey.

As new customer acquisition becomes more challenging, more brands are looking for ways to increase each consumers’ lifetime value. Earning and keeping the privilege of SMS messaging your consumers is one of those high potential relationships that can drive loyalty, repeat purchases, and premiumization. Megan Trinidad, VP, Executive Creative Director at digital design and advertising agency R/GA, joined the podcast to provide insights on the new best practices that are driving meaningful results for brands.

We are in an era where some of the tactics of the past around supply chain efficiency and promotions may be losing their ability to achieve growth and profitability on the digital shelf. Often, shifting focus on the digital shelf metrics you are trying to move can lead to creative strategies that create demand and greater profitability. But what metrics? Gregor Murray, VP of Strategy at Digital Commerce Global joined the podcast to present their CSMART Digital shelf Metric Framework that can help you turn digital shelf metrics into action.

As everyone strives towards increasing profitability in ecommerce and omnichannel, exerting more control over pricing erosion is a key area of opportunity. Which brings us to the people, process and tech to pull that off, and that often means building out and enforcing a MAP policy. We invited Rae Guimond, Director of Digital Shelf Strategy at PriceSpider, to join the pod and lay out the why, whats and how of implementing and honing a MAP policy in this era of profitability.

Hinkley is a family-owned, premium decorative lighting company being run by its 4th generation. To win in their category, they have invested not only in best in class product and lifestyle photography, but also in a super thoughtful and ambitious digital shelf presence paired with sterling consumer care. These investments help earn their premium, and Hinkley’s longer term north star is to build brand awareness in a category that feels often brandless. Mike Friedberg, Director Of Ecommerce at Hinkley, joins the podcast to outline their overall omnichannel and digital strategies on the way transforming the consumers’ relationship with Hinkley as they find the statement pieces that transform their home.