Death of a Sales­man is a play writ­ten by Amer­i­can play­wright Arthur Miller in 1949. It ad­dress­es the loss of iden­ti­ty and the in­abil­i­ty of a man to ac­cept change; the changes around him and the changes with­in him. It is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est plays of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Play­ing out be­fore our eyes in to­day’s world is the death of brick-and-mor­tar re­tail as the in­dus­try steadi­ly los­es ground to on­line shop­ping. As the world moves to­wards the da­ta age, are tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers fail­ing to adapt?

A fa­mous quote from mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing gu­ru Al­ber­to Brea sums up the sit­u­a­tion nice­ly and has be­come an en­dur­ing call to arms for mem­bers of the re­tail in­dus­try that hope to sur­vive the dig­i­tal age:

“Ama­zon didn’t kill the re­tail in­dus­try. They did it to them­selves with bad cus­tomer ser­vice. Net­flix did not kill Block­buster. They did it to them­selves with ridicu­lous late fees. Uber did not kill the taxi busi­ness. They did it to them­selves by lim­it­ing the num­ber of taxis and with fare con­trols. Ap­ple did not kill the mu­sic in­dus­try. They did it to them­selves by forc­ing peo­ple to buy full-length al­bums. AirBnB did not kill the ho­tel in­dus­try. They did it to them­selves by lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty and pric­ing op­tions. Tech­nol­o­gy by it­self is not the re­al dis­rupter. Be­ing non-cus­tomer-cen­tric is the biggest threat to any busi­ness.”

In­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to cus­tomer needs and a fail­ure to adapt to chang­ing times and tech­nolo­gies is what is de­stroy­ing tra­di­tion­al re­tail, not Ama­zon. The mes­sage be­ing sent here is there isn’t any tar­iff, du­ty, tax­a­tion or oth­er pro­tec­tion­ist mea­sure that can shield re­tail­ers from the in­evitable tsuna­mi that is on­line shop­ping. The on­ly last­ing op­tion is for brick-and-mor­tar re­tail­ers to be­come more sen­si­tive to their cus­tomers needs and to adapt to the chang­ing busi­ness cli­mate.

Many on­line re­tail­ers have been en­tic­ing cus­tomers with deals be­cause the costs of run­ning a phys­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment are con­sid­er­ably greater than for an on­line store. This re­mains the biggest chal­lenge to phys­i­cal re­tail­ers: cost struc­ture.

On­line sell­ing is just cheap­er and can of­fer a far wider se­lec­tion. On­line shop­ping has proven to be less cost­ly, less labour in­ten­sive, and jobs tend to be cen­tred in large metro ar­eas un­like the re­al­i­ty of many tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers. The ef­fect of on­line shop­ping on the tra­di­tion­al mar­ket place has been af­fec­tion­ate­ly called the Ama­zon ef­fect.

Lin Gros­man of Forbes Mag­a­zine states, “the Ama­zon ef­fect has in­tro­duced con­sumers to an al­most com­plete­ly fric­tion­less shop­ping process with near-im­me­di­ate re­sults (more and more, this refers to de­liv­ery, too). How­ev­er, the Ama­zon ef­fect has al­so spilled over in­to more tra­di­tion­al spaces. Cus­tomers now want the same ex­pe­ri­ence, whether they’re in front of their com­put­ers or in­side a shop­ping mall.”

Pro­tec­tion­ist mea­sures will on­ly serve to de­lay the in­evitable demise of non-adap­tive busi­ness­es be­cause such mea­sures do not ad­dress the es­sen­tial, core prob­lem—your cus­tomers are hap­pi­er else­where.

How can phys­i­cal re­tail­ers hope to com­pete?

Lin Gros­man goes on to say that ag­ile tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers have been of­fer­ing cus­tomers a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ex­pe­ri­ence in an at­tempt to meet their lofty stan­dards. Three ways tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers have been coun­ter­ing the Ama­zon ef­fect are:

1. Use brick-and-mor­tar to sup­port on­line stores

2. Track cus­tomer be­hav­iour in store, and

3. Lever­age mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy in store.

Gros­man con­tin­ues, “While phys­i­cal spaces still serve a pur­pose, many com­pa­nies are re­think­ing what that pur­pose is. One re­sult has been new-age re­tail stores like Nord­strom Lo­cal, a cloth­ing store with no ded­i­cat­ed in­ven­to­ry.

Cus­tomers can pick up their on­line or­ders and make re­turns. Beer, wine, cold-pressed juices and espres­so are avail­able, too. There are on­site tai­lors. Nord­strom lo­cal and stores like it are de­signed to serve the on­line ex­pe­ri­ence, not com­pete with it.”

When it comes to track­ing cus­tomer be­hav­iour; “every­one knows that you can use an­a­lyt­ics to im­prove your web­site, but these dig­i­tal tools are now in­creas­ing­ly ef­fec­tive in of­fline stores, too. E-com­merce web­sites were the in­flu­ence be­hind can­dy re­tail­er Lol­li and Pops lit­er­al­ly track­ing the paths cus­tomers take once they en­ter its stores. The in­sights have al­ready paid off. For ex­am­ple, the com­pa­ny found that one of its lo­ca­tions wasn’t see­ing the same rev­enue com­ing from its high-sales sweets sec­tion.

Af­ter check­ing in-store an­a­lyt­ics, they found that there was a ta­ble in the way that de­terred cus­tomers from ex­plor­ing the area in which these items were lo­cat­ed. These an­a­lyt­ics al­so help them bet­ter train their staff to en­gage with cus­tomers, in­clud­ing of­fer­ing them free sam­ples.

Us­ing this type of tech­nol­o­gy has al­lowed Lol­li and Pops to al­most com­plete­ly forego a mar­ket­ing bud­get, re­ly­ing al­most sole­ly on their cus­tomer ser­vice in­stead.”

When it comes to lever­ag­ing mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy in store, a re­cent study done by SOTI (a proven leader at cre­at­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions that re­duce the cost and com­plex­i­ty of busi­ness-crit­i­cal mo­bil­i­ty and the In­ter­net of Things) dis­cov­ered that:

• 92 per cent of shop­pers pre­fer stores that of­fer mo­bile ex­pe­ri­ences.

• 73 per cent want mPos (mo­bile point of sale) for quick­er check­out times.

• 65 per cent want lo­ca­tion-aware coupons.

• 61 per cent would choose us­ing a kiosk over speak­ing with a sales as­so­ciate.

• 47 per cent ex­pect per­son­alised ser­vice.

In this way, mo­bile and of­fline stores can work to­geth­er to ac­com­mo­date shop­pers who are be­com­ing more in­de­pen­dent. They al­ready know what they want when they en­ter a store. The re­tail­er’s op­por­tu­ni­ty is in pro­vid­ing a mo­bile ex­pe­ri­ence that will make it as easy as pos­si­ble for them to ac­quire it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Ac­cord­ing to a For­rester Re­port, $1.26 tril­lion worth of of­fline re­tail sales were in­flu­enced by dig­i­tal me­dia in some way. The same re­port es­ti­mates that num­ber would be $1.4 tril­lion in three more years. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescom­mu­ni­ca­tion­scoun­cil/2018/02/22/what-the-ama­zon-ef­fect-means-for-re­tail­ers/#3910e0982ded)

Is this the death of re­tail? On­ly the death of re­tail as we have known it. On­line shop­ping is here to stay be­cause it is sim­ply bet­ter, cheap­er, faster, and more re­spon­sive to cus­tomer need than tra­di­tion­al brick-and-mor­tar stores. Many coun­tries have tried to use pro­tec­tion­ist mea­sures to pro­tect their busi­ness class­es from in­evitable progress but all such poli­cies have come with se­vere con­se­quences.

In the im­mor­tal words of Dan­ny De­vi­to’s char­ac­ter (Lawrence Garfield) in the 1991 busi­ness movie clas­sic Oth­er Peo­ple’s Mon­ey:

“This com­pa­ny is dead. I didn’t kill it. Don’t blame me. It was dead when I got here. It’s too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were an­swered, and a mir­a­cle oc­curred, and the yen did this, and the dol­lar did that, and the in­fra­struc­ture did the oth­er thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber op­tics. New tech­nolo­gies. Ob­so­les­cence. We’re dead al­right. We’re just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke?

“Keep get­ting an in­creas­ing share of a shrink­ing mar­ket. Down the tubes. Slow but sure. You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of com­pa­nies mak­ing bug­gy whips. And I’ll bet the last com­pa­ny around was the one that made the best god­damn bug­gy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stock­hold­er in that com­pa­ny?

You in­vest­ed in a busi­ness and this busi­ness is dead. Let’s have the in­tel­li­gence, let’s have the de­cen­cy to sign the death cer­tifi­cate, col­lect the in­sur­ance, and in­vest in some­thing with a fu­ture.”

In the face of progress re­sis­tance is fu­tile. Adapt or die.