Miles Apart

Give this article a read ... from Brian Solis at The Altimeter Group.

• http://www.briansolis.com/2011/11/from-social-commerce-to-syndicated-commerce/

Now think about what you would write as a long-standing catalog executive, if you had to describe how your business was evolving ... would a single word from the presentation apply to your business?

Almost none of it would apply ... a 58 year old shopper doesn't act in the manner outlined in the article.  Sure, you can find eight percent of the audience that may act that way ... but not the whole audience.

And almost nothing about your paper would apply to the audience that consumes information from The Altimeter Group ... a 28 year old shopper doesn't act in a way that's congruent with how you market to your core audience, by and large.  Sure, you can find eight percent of this audience that may shop via catalogs, but not the whole audience.

Modern business models and traditional business models are miles apart ... miles apart in customer demographics ... miles apart in marketing strategies ... simply miles apart.

You could try to bolt catalogs on to social commerce ... it could work ... but it's not likely to work.

And you could try to bolt social commerce on to catalogs ... it could work ... but it's not likely to work.

The pundits tell us we have to do everything, they tell us exactly what the future holds (change or die).  It might be time to figure out just how many miles apart the pundits are from where you are.  If the distance is too great, it'll be really hard to change, requiring a different approach to chart a course to the future.