Seamless Xtra’s August Skinner speaks to Plama Spetsova, Head of Online at Bath & Body Works, Alshaya Group.
Bath & Body Works are a global leader in personal care and home fragrance. They have over 1800 stores in the US and Canada and a further 425 international locations.
Plama, how does Bath & Body Works connect with customers and communities around the world?
Well, Bath and Body Works connects with customers and communities around the world utilising various strategies and initiatives. First of all, the most important for us is product diversity. Obviously as you know, once you walk into our stores, we offer a wide range of products including all type of fragrances, body creams, candles and home frequencies. We cater to diverse preferences and tastes. The brand appeals to a broader customer base across different demographics and regions.
On top of that, we also utilise a number of innovative marketing approaches like social commerce, social media campaigns, influencer partnerships and lots of targeted advertising. Last but not least also we do a lot of community engagements. We are part of a lot of charitable initiatives in events. We do cross prime partnerships as well and we love to participate in all types of community events, fundraisers across the globe with all of our different partners.
If we’re looking at both physical and virtual stores then how is it that you predominantly captivate consumers?
Well, first and foremost, we need to start with this seamless omnichannel experience. Customers nowadays are expecting to have a seamless shopping experience from the store to online. Being able to offer all this type of integrated shopping experiences where a customer can research, browse and return products through any prefeered channel is really important. On top of that experiential shopping is going to be far and far more prevalent and is something that goes beyond traditional shopping. This might include all type of pop ups, live demonstrations, interactive displays and entertainment options which makes visiting the store a much more memorable and enjoyable experience.
Again, I would say community engagement realy helps which includes all those types of activities that encourage the customer to become a part of the community. This could be writing for blogs or hosting events, supporting local causes and creating spaces where the customers can actually meet like minded individuals. That sense of belonging is helping a lot to bring the brand loyalty to the place where we want it to be and creating this customer lifetime value.
With that being said, what does the future of online retail look like to you?
Well, I do believe the future of online retail is going to come faster than we think and really we need to focus on personalization. So this is the increasing of tailored offers to individual customers. We need to utilize all the data analytics and the artificial intelligence available to us in order to really understand really their preferences and anticipate their needs. On top of that, I would say again social commerce. Social media platforms are an opportunity for us to integrate shopping features allowing users to discover and purchase products according to their feeds and also to their needs.
Also very important is the flexibility and delivery options that we can provide to meet current expectations. Especially here in the region, we have a very high demand for same day delivery or even in a few hours delivery. All of these shopping options must be available in order for us to progress. Additioanlly, I would say sustainable practices. More and more the consumers are really involved with how a company operates and sustainability is going to be a huge topic moving forward.All online retailers will face pressure to adopt sustainable practices from their packaging right throughout their whole supply chain.
Finally, something that I believe will come much faster than I think is the adoption of the blockchain technology, which has a huge potential to revolutionise the overall online retail industry. Knowing where an item is from the production until the end at any step of the process is really going to facilitate the emergence of this decentralized marketplaces moving forward.
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