Macys Wants To Blow Up The Silos and Bring Ecommerce In-store

I was surprised to come across a quote from Terry Lundgren, CEO at Macy’s (source: pymnts.com) -

“It’s clear to me that the consumer likes shopping online,” Lundgren said to Reuters. “I am focused on how do we make them feel as comfortable and ready to buy in our stores as they do online?”

He goes on to describe the need for a broad array of other tools that essentially merge traditional notions of in-store with ecommerce:

1. In-store, web-connected kiosks that pull up customer reviews and accept payment
2. an electronic, automatic sales system that offers recommendations; 
3. and an “Endless Aisle” that uses tablet technology to bring the diversity of products available online to the physical storefront

In other words, what Macy’s is doing is rethinking how its customers buy (and how its sales teams sell) and applying new technology to reinvent the entire experience.  

Sounds like a Customer Engagement Strategy at work … and should help them participate in the continued growth in ecommerce sales across the hundreds of categories they carry.

Just in case you were wondering, Macy’s saw its e-commerce business grow 40 percent in 2011 and it expects to reach $2 billion (seven percent of its total) this year.