Redirection: How Catalogs Create Demand For Online Pureplays

Given that catalogers seem to enjoy yesterday's discussion about the failure of catalog and multichannel marketing, is is appropriate to share the following outline concerning demand generation in 1994, 2001 and 2008. Of course, what follows in the image is only a theory of mine --- no hard evidence to prove one way or another. Click on the image to enlarge it.



















My theory suggests that catalog marketing is as effective as it has ever been. However, Google and Social Media have stepped in and redirected demand that would have gone to your brand.

Redirection (otherwise known as "transfer" in Multichannel Forensics) happens in many different ways.

• Google and SEO --- think about how many of you found my blog via Google/SEO?
  
• Google and Paid Search.
• Social Media --- Check out Manolo's Shoe Blog as an example.
• User Generated Reviews --- You see an item advertised in the Crutchfield catalog, you read a review from a customer on Amazon.com, and you ultimately buy the item on Amazon instead of Crutchfield.

Redirection is lethal for a brand that doesn't play along. Since this is just a theory, I don't have any solid numbers to back up my thesis --- I would surmise, however, that maybe 25% to 50% of your demand is "at risk" for redirection.

This theory suggests that we have two important objectives.

1. Prevent redirection of demand away from our brand.
2. Induce redirection of demand to our brand.

A metric like the "net promoter score" would be useful, wouldn't it? You look at the percentage of demand that is redirected to your brand, then subtract the demand that is redirected away from your brand. The net is your score --- positive is good, negative is bad. Think of Zappos. Their score has to be amazingly good, right? Footsmart sends a catalog, the customer checks prices online, and buys at Zappos where she gets the item tomorrow via free shipping. Footsmart gets a negative score in this instance.

Abacus/Epsilon --- what do you think? You could so easily help the catalog industry that pays your freight by generating an index of this nature for your clients. There you go, free product development information from The MineThatData Blog! You've got bright people, make something happen! Heck, toss me a few pennies, and I'll develop the prototype.

Too often, we view the world through tactics, like catalog marketing or e-mail marketing or paid search or SEO or affiliate marketing. How often do we view the world in the context of "redirection"? How might we approach competitive advantage via the concept of redirection?

Kindle, From Amazon: A Multichannel Story

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com (the single-channel company that multichannel pundits told us would never make it to profitability) shares his thoughts with shareholders about Kindle. Just click the following link to read the letter: Jeff Bezos on Kindle.

I read this letter, and I wonder where this level of thinking is from the bevy of multichannel pundits extolling the virtues of catalog, online and retail channels? Read the comments about "how will you do electronic book signings?", as an example.

Kindle may end up being a spectacular failure, or it may be a revolutionary tool. Success or failure doesn't minimize the level of strategic multichannel thinking that a single physical channel brand exhibits in this letter to shareholders.

Gift Wrapping At Amazon.com

Here's a thorny challenge.

Maybe you're like me (most likely you're not like me, but that's a topic for another day). Being 1,700 miles from family, you visit Amazon to purchase a gift for your nephew for Christmas.

You select the gift, then you select gift wrapping. Except, the item isn't eligible for gift wrapping. The item comes from one of Amazon's partners.

In this case, you run into a unique challenge in multichannel marketing. Amazon uses a vendor that allows for a different customer experience than the experience typically promoted by Amazon.

If you were CEO of a brand that had business partners with different customer service capabilities than your brand, how would you deal with this challenge?

L.L. Bean

Let's fast forward to January 1, 2009. Mailing catalogs is now cost-prohibitive, due to a 300% increase in postage brought on by another round of postal reform.

You're an executive at L.L. Bean, the venerable catalog giant located in beautiful New England. You just completed fiscal 2008, a year in which you drove $900,000,000 in net sales via your website, and $600,000,000 via the telephone. Maybe you spent $250,000,000 marketing catalogs to your customers.

Take away the catalogs, and the expense associated with them.

Here's a series of questions for you:

• Could you re-allocate $250,000,000 via online marketing? Where would you spend it?
• Do you have any confidence that e-mail could replace catalog as the primary sales driver? How would you change your e-mail strategy?
• Your website generated $900,000,000 in net sales in 2008. What is your forecast for web sales in 2009, sans catalog?
• You generated $600,000,000 in net sales in 2008 via the telephone --- folks who read the catalog, and called a sales associate to place an order. Without a catalog, what is your sales forecast for 2009, over the telephone?
• You had 115,000,000 website visits in 2008. How would you change your marketing strategy to capitalize on this enormous informational resource known as www.llbean.com? How much would your traffic change if your catalogs didn't exist?

Of course, the USPS isn't going to make catalog marketing impractical in 2009.

That being said, if you went through this exercise, could you recover your sales via the marketing techniques that Amazon or Zappos or Blue Nile uses --- companies on the other side of the Marketing Digital Divide?

At minimum, your executive team should have answers to these questions.

Endless: A Shoe And Handbag Business Courtesy Of Amazon.com

Amazon recently unvieled a new e-commerce business called Endless. Featuring fashionable handbags and shoes, Endless uses a new hook to compete against multichannel retailers like Macy's and online pureplays like Zappos. The hook: Free Next Day Shipping!! Order an item at 1:00pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and you'll have it on Wednesday.

In case you haven't walked into your local UPS store, attempting to ship a product cross-country via next day air, the proposition is not inexpensive. How can this business compete? The following numbers are for illustrative purposes only --- the numbers are not intended to reflect absolute reality at any of the retailers in the example. However, the numbers should be adequate for a directional argument.

Let's assume you are an aspiring woman hoping to purchase the Jessica Simpson Dawson Satchel via an online business. You narrow your choices down to Endless, Zappos and Macy's.

Assuming you live in a state that has a six percent sales tax, the total price for the same item, including tax and shipping, is $248 at Endless, $251.95 at Zappos, and a whopping $281.91 at Macy's. The item will arrive tomorrow from Endless, in three to five days from Zappos, and in five to eleven days from Macy's.

Given these choices, the logical choice is for the customer to purchase the item at Endless.

Can Endless make money doing this? It is possible. At the end of this post, I include a sample profit and loss statement for each company.

The punchline is this: In order for each company to generate the same level of profit from this item, Endless needs to sell 1,000 units, Zappos needs to sell 741 units, and Macy's needs to sell 491 units. If Amazon has efficiencies that make their expense structure cheaper than Zappos or Macy's, the number of units decrease.

Amazon is betting that the Endless business model will cause customers to be 30% more productive than Zappos, and 100% more productive than Macy's, using these assumptions. This gets Endless to a break-even scenario, most likely, on a fixed-cost basis, and generates the same number of dollars of variable profit as Zappos and Macy's.

What do you think? Do you think customers will flock to Endless to take advantage of free next day shipping? Who will be hurt more by this strategy, Zappos, who is directly competing on total price, or Macy's, who has a retail channel that essentially provide "free shipping same day"??


Sample Profit And Loss Statement

Jessica Simpson Dawson Satchel Price Elasticity And Profitability
	Endless.com	Zappos.com	Macys.com
Item Price	$248.00	$251.95	$248.00
Shipping/Handling	$0.00	$0.00	$17.95
Salex Tax (6%)	$0.00	$0.00	$15.96
Total Cost	$248.00	$251.95	$281.91
Delivery Time	1 Day	3 - 5 Days	5 - 11 Days
Estimated Units	1,000	741	491
Demand	$248,000	$186,695	$121,768
Net Fulfilled (90% of Demand)	$223,200	$168,025	$109,591
Less Returns (30% of Demand)	($66,960)	($50,408)	($32,877)
Net Sales	$156,240	$117,618	$76,714
Gross Margin (50% of NS)	$78,120	$58,809	$38,357
Less Marketing	($18,000)	($18,000)	($18,000)
Less Picking & Packing (20% of NS)	($31,248)	($23,524)	($15,343)
Shipping Expense/Item	$17.50	$8.00	$5.00
Less Shipping Expense	($17,500)	($5,928)	($2,455)
Plus Shipping Income	$0	$0	$8,813
Variable Operating Profit	$11,372	$11,357	$11,373
Profit as a % of Net Sales	7.3%	9.7%	14.8%
Profit per Item Sold	$11.37	$15.33	$23.16
Ad to Sales Ratio	11.5%	15.3%	23.5%