The future is integration!

The rather dramatic news last week that major high-street-chain stores closed an average of 14 stores a day across Britain in 2011 (LDC figures) will come as no surprise to anyone aware of the recent debates in Westminster, regarding the Mary Portas campaign to revitalise the British High Street.

Readers of this blog, however, will also be aware of the concept of integration.

In other words, multi-channel retailing: a way to harness online and mobile to support bricks-and-mortar stores. Mobile in particular has tremendous potential to push people into physical stores, though geolocation and mobile vouchers redeemable in store.

Mobile itself is huge and this is its year, as well! Brits are already the top mobile shoppers in Europe, for the third year running, and M-commerce is set to soar by 53% in 2012. By using features like Vouchercloud’s opt-in app, for example, the user’s physical location can be used to provide deals and discounts in the stores that happen to be nearest to them.

By embracing technology like this, a positive push-and-pull effect can then be created. Add into the mix all-important marketing data, too, and a retailer gains insight into what motivates and incentivises those consumers to make purchases, allowing them to be super-responsive to trends in consumer spending.

And if life imitates art, as Oscar Wilde believed, integration has already happened in the arts world, as illustrated by the landslide success of the silent, black and white French movie, The Artist, at the BAFTAs recently, and the queues around the block for Leonardo da Vinci’s exhibition at The National in London!

There is plenty of space and demand for contemporary culture to co-exist amongst the mass-media and mainstream; it doesn’t need to be niche. It’s a false dichotomy to say it has to be one or the other, be it in the case of shopping on or offline, or in the arts. So as access-points multiply and access to information increases, perhaps we are actually moving towards an exciting symbiosis?

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