BILLION DIGITAL BUYERS
They say if you don’t know history, you cannot create it...
As the world gets more digital, it’s more important than ever to understand the fundamental shifts in thinking, global commerce, and human mental models to truly appreciate our evolution as humans to learn from the past and create an incredibly great future.
Contents
Chapter 1: The History of Retail 4
Chapter 2: Disruptive Retailing 10
Chapter 3: Billion Digital Buyers 13
Chapter 4: The Omni-Channel Gamut 21
Chapter 5: Partnerships & Joint Ventures 27
Chapter 6: Big Data. Big Volumes. 29
Chapter 7: The Silk Route 35
Chapter 8: Where Luxury meets Personalization 37
Chapter 9: Mobile – The not-so-secret weapon 40
Chapter 10: Big Billion Days 43
Chapter 11: Work from Internet 46
Chapter 12: $3.7 trillion Wellness industry 47
Chapter 13: Evolution – From Barter to Bitcoin 49
Chapter 14: E-sports – The rise of the digital athlete 52
Chapter 15: Social Commerce 53
Chapter 16: The essence of IoT 57
Chapter 17: Business AI : Startup story 61
Chapter 18: An experimentation DNA 63
Chapter 19: Testing Direct-to-Consumer models 66
Chapter 20: Good Design = More revenue 69
Conclusion 71
Foreword
As the world gets more digital and AI becomes more mature, companies must deeply understand the fundamental shifts in global thinking, commerce operations and digital consumerism to truly appreciate our evolution as humans to learn from the past and create a great future.
Per a recent world economic study, we have entered a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ where industries, technologies, and jobs are getting disrupted faster than ever before. The astronomical change in economic landscape, industry shifts, and consumer behaviors pose a direct threat to traditional business models.
Let’s consider the brick and motor retail, for instance, losing revenues to the online and mobile channels. For the first time in retail history, customers are asking for what many retailers and brands cannot provide. Today’s consumers are simply unforgiving, craving for the best digital experiences along with lowest price, vast selection, and fastest convenience.
In the United States, one in every five dollars spent goes to Amazon. In 2018, Amazon was responsible for over 50% of the growth in the United States commerce. A study from Pew Research Center reported nearly all Americans under 50 are purchasing online.
In a letter to shareholders in Feb ’16, Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert said the impact of “tectonic shifts” in consumer spending has spread more broadly in the last year to retailers “that had previously proven to be relatively immune to such shifts. Walmart, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Staples, Whole Foods and many others have felt the impact of disruptive changes from online competition and new business models.”
The rate of speed in change has been overwhelming. And, when retailers and brands don’t realize and disrupt their operating model; satisfying the ever-demanding consumer becomes an increasing problem. Be it the e-commerce gold rush in Asia or rise of the last mile delivery ‘Unicorns’, retail industry at the peak of Digital Disruption.
Chapter 1: The History of Retail
Oldest known form of currency is the barter system that started in the 9000 BC. Cows, animals, and poultry were treated as forms of exchange when currency didn’t exist. Barter system worked really well for a while, but was not sustainable, making it difficult to store wealth.
Similar case with quantifying the value of goods, it was almost impractical until 3000 BC, when Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) Shakel was introduced, both as a unit of currency and unit of weight.
Fast forward to 800 BC, Agora’s started ancient Greek marketplace where local artisans had their goods and services displayed for sale. For accounting purposes, Chinese abacus ‘Suanpan’ was introduced in 200 BC.
Suanpan was 20 cm long with seven rods with two beads in the upper row and five in the lower. Modern-day multiplication, addition, division, subtraction, square and cube roots have been derived from the Suanpan.
This accounting technique continued until the first cash register was invented by James Ritty, in 1883. James was the owner of the saloon in Dayton, Ohio, USA and wanted a place to store cash to prevent employee theft. In 1878 on a ship back from Europe, Ritty noticed a machine that counted the number of times the ship's propeller completed a revolution, he took that as an inspiration and patented the Ritty Model 1 along with his brother John in 1883.
It was called “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier”.
The original model, however, did not have a cash drawer, it simply recorded the sales noting the amounts for each. James tried manufacturing the cashier and wanted to build cash register’s business but had no luck, he finally sold his register to a group of Ohio investors.
It was John H. Patterson, who eventually turned this into a fortune, forming the National Cash Register Company, today’s NCR, a leader in Point-of-Sale(POS) solutions, which today is valued at $5 billion. Every service department in their company had the slogan “We Cannot Afford To Have A Single Dissatisfied Customer”, a live testimony of their customer focused culture.
Between 1843 and 1855, gentleman named Rowland Hussey Macy opened four retail dry good stores, all of which have failed. Then he moved to NYC in 1848 and established “R.H.Macy & Co” on 6th Avenue between 13th and 14th streets. First day sales on Oct 28th, 1858 totaled $11.28. Macy's logo included a star, which comes from a tattoo that Macy got as a teenager, working on a Nantucket whaling ship, the Emily Morgan.
The business grew and they kept expanding with more stores and started attracting customers with Santa Claus themed exhibits and cash savings offers with a money back guarantee. In 1902, the flagship store moved to 34th Herald Square, which eventually occupied the entire block on the seventh avenue at 2.2 million square feet.
As of 2016, it was 115 years old, making the world’s second largest departmental store. Their thanksgiving parade
