December 25, 2013

Merchandise Forensics - Mega Winners

Read this little ditty (click here) about music.

In the pre-mobile world, the artist released a CD with ten songs, of which between one and three, if lucky, became popular.

Now, with music streaming on a mobile phone, the goal is to find a mega-winner and ride it for a long, long time.

Or we have movies, where the number of movies are being reduced, but the ones being released are mega-winners that generate a ton of profit (click here).

When we think about mobile, we think about "omnichannel", and all the nonsense that comes with integrating channels for a theoretically magical customer experience.

We should be thinking about MERCHANDISE!

What is happening, of course, is that mobile is splitting us into two kinds of companies.

  1. Long-tail brands like Amazon, or even department stores like Macy's.
  2. Everybody else, who, in order to succeed, are moving toward a small number of winners that disproportionately carry the success/failure of the business. This business model, being forced upon us by a mobile experience where almost nothing can be featured on a 5" screen, is very, very risky, especially when new item development is poor.
Analyze your own data, over the past ten years ... you'll see this trend evolving, happening, being forced upon us.

Contact me for your own Merchandise Forensics analysis (kevinh@minethatdata.com).

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