Kohl’s Department Store
Kohl’s (NYSE: KSS) is a one of the leading specialty department stores in the United States with 1,162 stores spread throughout the country. The store is headquartered in Wisconsin and prides itself on inspiring and empowering families to lead fulfilled lives, while offering exclusive brands, great savings and the ability to shop at Kohls.com via mobile devices. Whether consumers are shopping for clothing (men, women, kids, baby, juniors) bed and bath, furniture, active wear or jewelry, Kohl’s provides a wide-variety of choices online.
Online approach
Kohl’s has experienced more ups than downs when it comes to e-commerce success. In fact, 2014 (Q3) was a solid growth year for the retailer as they grew roughly by 30 percent and expected to grow by 20-25 percent in the fourth quarter. Kohl’s is heavily invested in their online division of business and credits much of its growth to their cross-channel initiatives.
In August 2014, Kohl’s announced plans to enable consumers to purchase merchandise online and pick it up in stores and begin shipping online orders from its stores as opposed to e-commerce fulfillments centers, allowing customers to receive orders faster (Love). In 2013, Kohl’s experienced an online sales increase of 28 percent during the second quarter. This success followed the retailer’s transition to Oracle Commerce. The e-commerce site, in addition to an implementation of Endeca, an unstructured data management, web commerce and business intelligence solution, has enabled the retailer to create a more personalized online shopping journey for consumer (Fiorletta). As you can see by the graphic below, Kohl’s is one of the major online retailers when it comes to visitors on ‘Black Friday.’
Tools and techniques
Kohl’s is intent on enhancing the consumers’ online experience and wants to increase it engagement rates to encourage returns visitors to their site. These goals are not necessarily unique to Kohl’s but their decision to work with Endeca and Oracle, provided actionable analytics for the company. Oracle Commerce is designed to help retailers automate and customize the online buying experience. However, the implementation also will help accelerate other initiatives Kohl’s has planned (Fiorletta). Kohl’s is trying to use flexible delivery options to keep pace with consumers’ omnichannel behaviors. Additionally, in-store kiosks already account for one in 10 online orders, and 95 percent of online order returns go to brick-and-mortar stores.
Tracking via mobile
Kohl’s uses additional approaches to track its customer behavior and buying habits. In 2014, the store introduced an indoor positioning system that is with the consumer as they navigate the aisles for products and services. The mobile-based technology allows shoppers to opt in for promotions as they enter the store. Throughout their visit, people receive lifestyle content in real time based on the products they appear to be searching for.
For example, if a customer has decided to opt in to receive information via the Kohl’s mobile app and he or she is lingering in the home goods aisle, Kohl’s knows to send relevant content to this shopper to increase the likelihood that he or she makes a purchase. Collecting big data is a result of Kohl’s effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategy and supports the company’s broader content creation campaigns. Through Kohl’s CRM strategy, the company knows what the customer purchased in the past, and with its in-store technology, the company can track his or her behavior as he or she moves through the aisles (Karczewski). Kohl’s also can make the data more actionable by simply pushing the information they retrieved to their content creators. The company is tracking even the slightest common threads in buying habits to use with smaller fractions of consumers to stay at the top of mind. This strategy can possibly fuel shopping thoughts when consumers have no intentions of purchasing.
Collecting data via mobile devices is top of mind for Kohl’s and it starts from the top down within the company. The chain’s anticipated e-commerce gains will come largely from mobile. “Mobile is driving the e-commerce business,” said Kevin Mansell (Kohl’s Chairman, CEO & President). “And essentially a large portion of the increase in mobile in e-commerce traffic has been accounted for on mobile devices and the shift from desktop to mobile, both phone and tablet, is dramatic, accelerating, and doesn’t appear to have any slowdown in sight (Rueter).”
Data collection
As you might suspect, Kohl’s is collecting the most data possible it can about a consumer to drive better engagement and visits to their site and in store brick-and-mortar. Kohl’s is collecting names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, location information. When the information is gathered, the Kohl’s marketing team goes to work on the data. The information collected is used to tell Kohl’s about the consumer and other products and services the company offers. The information also is used for marketing and promotional purposes, to build and improve communications with the consumer and improve the overall shopping experience across all channels (Kohls.com).
The company site also is very open about how it shares consumer’s information with outside organizations. The site says the following with regards to sharing information: “Companies that provide support services to us and our business partners; third parties that provide financial products and services related to our business, such as Kohl’s Charge; and authorities or other third parties if required by law or based upon our good faith belief that it is necessary to conform or comply with the law (Kohls.com).” There is no question, Kohl’s has a great deal of technical language to protect itself from sharing information, but it does seem honest and forthcoming about its intentions.
Additional tools and approach
I have no doubt Kohl’s is using various ways to collect data from its website. However, when I visit their website, it does seem to be a bit overwhelming to the eye. Admittedly, I am not a big online shopper, but I do shop for certain items online. It seems to me the sheer aesthetics of the site is too much in terms of what products and services are presented. I understand the company is focused on traffic to the site, but if there are too many pages to view, it could turn off certain shoppers. The store offers thousands of products and services which can make it difficult to condense everything into a certain amount of tabs, but finding a way to simplify the pages, might increase the data collection methods.
Social media also is another key metric to collecting data and interacting with consumers. I am aware Kohl’s participates on many social platforms, but their social presence is not easily visible on their landing page – like it should be. I searched their Twitter (@Kohls) account and it says they have 9,187 followers. That number is not very impressive for a company of their scope. As I stated earlier, Kohl’s places a premium with their online traffic. In terms of social media (at least for Twitter), they do not seem to place a high priority on social engagement. The problem I see is they do not follow anyone – unless I am missing something, this is a problem. As we all know, communication is a two-way path and Kohl’s seems to be missing the boat on Twitter.
Finally, I think a video blog (V-blog) might be a useful tool for consumers. This could be a portal to show off new lines of product with models and actors. The videos do not have to be extravagant, but they could offer another way to see who is viewing the website. This can offer more metrics to include into the data pile. This could grow the consumer base thus boost online sales.
References
Love, J. (December 8, 2014), E-commerce is a bright spot for Kohl’s in Q3, Retrieved from:
http://bit.ly/12YV9oS
Fiorletta, A. (October 25, 2013), Kohl’s Sees 28% Increase In Online Sales With
Oracle Commerce, Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/ICCSmb
Karczewski, T. (June 30, 2014), 6 Steps to a Data-Driven Content Marketing Strategy,
Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/TwFJ5N
Rueter, T. (August 15, 2014), Kohl’s maps out its e-commerce plans for 2014, Retrieved
From: http://bit.ly/1vKtAN2
Kohls.com (June 5, 2014), Kohl’s Privacy Policy – Highlights, Retrieved from:
http://bit.ly/1C9xsJu
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