Carol Spieckerman's Brain On...Amazon's Impact

In Carol Spieckerman's latest contribution as a Retail Wire Brain Trust panelist, she comments on Amazon's ongoing (and overlooked) impact on retail.

Read the full discussion

Here's what she had to say ... "Amazon continues to change the game in ways that have been largely overlooked. Thanks to Amazon, traditional retailers are becoming category-agnostic and expanding away from their category-defined cores as never before. I see this dynamic accelerating online (I included the the spate of "marketplace" launches as one of two significant events of 2011 that flew under the radar) and in store (drug retailers forays into food, grocers launching beauty lines, etc.). The more endless Amazon's aisles get, the broader everyone else's assortments become in response. What are the implications of everyone being a marketplace?

Amazon is still portrayed as a pure-play etailer when in fact they are pursuing alliances with retailers on terra firma (the site-to-store beta with 7-Eleven). As formidable as Amazon is, perhaps they are actually being underestimated when relegated to virtual-only status.

Amazon will further transform retail in 2012 in multiple ways while most pay attention only to the obvious implications."

Heading to CES? Carol will be participating in the conference panel, Electronic Retailing in the 21st Century on January 11th at 1:30 (North Hall, room N260) and conducting private corporate presentations throughout the week.

To schedule a meeting with Carol at CES to discuss your 2012 retail and brand strategy, contact her directly at carol@newmarketbuilders.com