Reuters
Residents prepared for Hurricane Sandy during a Wal-Mart Store Inc. in Virginia Beach, Va., Sunday.
Hurricane Sandy is portion as a sign that while Americans adore a preference of shopping things with a click of a mouse, when disaster strikes they still rest on a earthy store.
“A charge is where we roughly kind of flog behind to aged school,” pronounced Brian Sozzi, a sell attention researcher and editor of Decoding Wall St., a newsletter.
That could be good news for bondage like Wal-Mart and Target, who in new years have faced extreme foe from assertive online-only retailers such as Amazon.com. That’s led to conjecture that a old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar plan was apropos obsolete.
“Everyone’s observant that brick-and-mortar retailing is dead. All we need to do is go to Amazon right now and form in ‘hurricane preparation’ and zero comes up,” Sozzi noted.
(In fact, a hunt for that word on Amazon.com resulted in listings for Season One of a radio uncover “Dawson’s Creek,” a book “Hurricane Punch” and a video called “Hurricane Preparation Video, Emergency Preparedness Series.”)
It’s loyal that people who are within hours of being strike by a whirly don’t have a oppulance of watchful a day, let alone a week, for their food reserve and candles to uncover adult in a brownish-red box.
Same-day delivery, that some online retailers have experimented with, might not assistance in an puncture situation, when smoothness trucks might not be privileged to conduct out.
Still, experts contend that retailers are creation a large mistake if they omit record totally during a time like this. In fact, intelligent retailers can use their websites, Facebook pages and other record to assistance consumers figure out what stores are open, and who has equipment in stock.
Tom Aiello, a orator for Sears Holdings, that includes Sears and Kmart, pronounced a tradesman is doing only that, targeting business in a immeasurable storm-affected area with e-mails, website banners and Facebook posts.
The tradesman also is creation use of record that lets consumers see what equipment are in batch nearby, including charge essentials like generators and sequence saws.
“Sears and Kmart have been around in these communities for a series of years. They’ve always had a story of operative in these communities,” Aiello said. “What’s opposite is this record and how that’s unequivocally helping.”
Wal-Mart is gripping a list of storm-related store closures on a portion of a website reserved for disaster response. The association also posted a couple to ready.gov, a supervision preparedness website, on a Facebook page.
Wal-Mart orator Kory Lundberg pronounced a tradesman was regulating internal Facebook pages and geo-targeted Facebook posts to keep people in a influenced area adult to date on store openings and other information.
Target posted an picture of a Hurricane Sandy foresee along with a list of store closures. The association also pronounced that it was bringing additional supplies, such as batteries and food, into stores in a area.
Sozzi, a sell analyst, was gratified to see that some retailers were creation an bid to use record to improved offer business streamer to a earthy store.
Jim Sinegal, Co-founder and former CEO of Costco, explains how retailers keep their shelves stocked forward of a storm, and a intensity impact on a election.
Still, he pronounced he would have favourite to see retailers get a lot some-more assertive about communicating to business that such collection are available.
He pronounced many business still substantially aren’t wakeful that they could go to a website and check on store inventories, and instead are relying on out-of-date methods like pursuit stores and pushing from plcae to location.
“I consider opposite a board, everybody has finished a sore job,” he said.
More business news:
- Americans feeling improved about economy
- Sandy to keep batch markets shuttered Tuesday
- Toyota on tip in latest Consumer Reports survey
- Video: What food to save, chuck out if we remove power
- Sign adult for the Business newsletter
Article source: http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/29/14783169-storm-shows-retailers-rely-on-brick-and-mortar-despite-technology