Ecommerce Brand Shops are the New Store-Within-A-Store
Store-within-a-store strategies have been become more common as brands revamp their retail strategies to address changes in the landscape. Examples include Sephora within Kohl’s, Ulta Beauty and Disney within Target and Toys R Us within Macy’s.
Many brands and retailers are lagging, however, in taking advantage of the digital equivalent of a store-within-a-store on a retailer’s ecommerce site: a brand shop (aka store aka page). A few examples of shops in different categories on Amazon, a leader in this space, are:
Samsung https://amzn.to/3VqusUT
e.l.f. https://amzn.to/3CRQAAn
Halo https://amzn.to/3Ms7UPw
Benefits of a Brand Shop
Deploying a brand shop is an impactful ecommerce merchandising tactic that can acquire and retain customers, maintain prices and grow basket size within shopping environments often characterized by brand and product parity and where purchase decisions are driven by less-differentiating factors like product search ranking, price and reviews.
To drive increased sales, an effective brand shop:
Communicates your brand. It helps shoppers understand your positioning and, therefore, why you are the right choice for them more effectively than can be done through product listings alone.
Presents a merchandise assortment. It helps shoppers see your other products, find alternatives and buy complementary products versus considering only items that show up in the retailer’s search results.
Provides enhanced product information. Where information in product listings is limited, the brand shop can provide complementary information, such as the differences between products in a line or how you source ingredients, to help answer questions, overcome doubts and create preference.
Increases your brand presence and share of voice. Having a brand shop expands your presence on the retailer’s site beyond the product listings and paid advertising, which improves your visibility and acts as endorsement of the retailer to give shoppers confidence in buying your products in that channel.
Strengthens retailer relationships. Investing in a brand shop demonstrates commitment to growing your business at that retailer and the resulting sales and – for paid brand shops – advertising revenue for the retailer can increase your value and influence with that retailer.
Creating an Effective Brand Shop
For marketers that want to establish or strengthen their brand shop on a retailer’s ecommerce site, deploying an effective shop requires more than uploading a header with a logo or brand ad and displaying products underneath. Decisions must be made about:
How does the shop fit into your overall ecommerce strategy?
How does the shop support your ecommerce strategy on that specific retailer?
What is the brand messaging in the shop and how does that relate to your overall brand communications?
What product assortment do you offer in the shop? Which products and bundles do you feature?
What is the most effective brand and product content to use given the specifications for that retailer’s shops?
How and how often do you refresh the shop? How does it align with your seasonal promotions, for example?
How do you measure the effectiveness of the brand shop and optimize it over time?
These are some of the questions that must be answered and then effectively executed on to create an impactful shop and this process must be repeated for each retailer. As with many other ecommerce efforts, the approach should be informed by a combination of leading practices, category-specific insights, testing and analytics and creative problem-solving and be revisited regularly to address changes in the market.
Stay Ahead of the Competition
For brands and retailers that are still evaluating whether to dive into this space, there are several reasons why you should be moving forward ASAP if ecommerce is a key aspect of your business:
First, brand shops are much simpler to establish than physical store-within-store deals. In physical retail, only a select few are able to take advantage of this strategy for driving visibility at the point of purchase. Ecommerce has given all companies access to this strategy, offering a new way to grow sales that should be put to use.
Second, taking advantage of the strengths of digital and ecommerce, brand shops create new retail capabilities for brands and new experiences for consumers. This “store-within-a-store 2.0” provides opportunities for new merchandising strategies and tactics that employ, for example, enhanced data, rich media and the “endless aisle” to create potentially more impactful point-of-sale experiences than their physical equivalents.
Third, since brand shops are not constrained by physical space, there will be increasing use of them and, therefore, competition among brands for share of voice within digital aisle as consumers discover, value and use brand shops in their decision-making. Having a brand shop will become table stakes, so it is better for brands to establish competency now in using them – and for retailers in providing them – to stay ahead of competitors.
Any brand looking to grow its ecommerce sales should consider brand shops within its current strategy and evolve them as the landscape changes. With the continued importance of retail ecommerce, as well the adoption of brands, retailers and consumers alike of new ecommerce content and capabilities, we expect rapid growth in the opportunities for and impact of creating brand shops in third party retailers.