Football Metrics and Marketing KPIs

What's wrong with ranking on simple metrics?

A common way to rank things is based on a straightforward metric.  For example, football teams are ranked on their total, offensive and defensive performance.   Consider the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; they are currently ranked 1st in the NFL in terms of being the stingiest defense based on the yards allowed per game - a measly 47 yards per game or about 2 feet per minute played. 

Are they that good or is that the result of something else? 

In contrast, when viewed in terms of pass defense they rank dead last giving up more yards per game than any other team.  This ranking in turn comes from two contributing factors: the opposition completes both longer plays and a higher percentage of attempts.  The result is 353 yards given up by passing.

So, could it be that they are ranked so well in terms of rush defense simply because other teams know they can be successful passing the ball?  It turns out that opponents run the ball 32% of the time (5th lowest). So, yes the numbers are skewed based on the distribution of the events themselves.  They have good run defense metrics in part because teams don't run the ball.

We tend to like simple numbers, but they can be hiding something important or possibly misleading.  Consider typical marketing metrics:

• Conversion rate
• Response rate
• Attribution
• Market share

All are highly summarized metrics, just like 'yards per game' that attempt to roll up the details into a comparable key performance indicator.  Thus, they all run the risk of hiding the important insights; and it is the insights that drives changes in marketing plans.

The trick to communicating insights is to find the right way to present the information; and that usually comes in story book form.

And by the way, Tampa Bay does give up the fewest yards per attempt in the league so they may be that good. 

UPDATE: Stats found here http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/

10 Different Kinds of Shopping Trips

Why do we go shopping?

A recent white paper by Jim Barnes of BMAI Strategy describes 10 different scenarios for shopping at the mall, each with different goals.

1. Recreational: where the outing and entertainment choices are what's important
2. Purposive: planned and with a goal in mind to buy something specific
3. Social: spending time with others is more important than actually buying things
4. Reconnaissance: looking for inspiration or 'what's new'
5. As a Treat: driven by a mood and desire to reward oneself
6. As a Quest: looking for a 'great find' is the end result
7. As Entertainment: people watching and window shopping
8. Word-of-Mouth: following up directly on the advice of others
9. Event-Based: a subset of 'purposive trips' where an occasion drives the search and purchase
10. "Going-to-the-Mall": the place itself is the attraction.  Like Starbucks, it is the "third place"

Many of these types also relate to individual retail stores and on-line shopping.  And in all cases the information needs of the consumer are very different. As a result a mix or blend of content is required to help them decide.  For those trips where transacting is actually the goal some are emotional (Reward) and some are promotional (Quest) while others are informational (Purposive) or communal (Word-of-Mouth).

So in addition to thinking about channel and device as part of our communication blueprint we need to look how we can serve the right blend of content in these situations.   And yes, we have to figure out intent and context first.

Marketing Ecosystem: Direct-to-consumer

What does the landscape look like?

The marketing landscape is cluttered.  Just look at any of the Lumascape diagrams (here is their one for social) and we're astounded by the sheer numbers of players involved and thus the complexity of it all.   A spate or recent discussions about partnerships, competition, positioning, and offerings all led for the need to put some sort of structure together that covered the major types of players as well as their respective offerings as it relates to direct-to-consumer marketing.  

Here's a synopsis of where we ended up...

The offerings were divided into consulting versus implementation and the players were allocated to one of four types.

• Management Consulting - focused on crafting unique solutions based on a practice
• Business Consulting - delivering the infrastructure, including organizational, to execute
• Agency, Boutique Firms - charged with taking a brief and transforming it into campaigns
• Platform Providers - providing the execution and tracking tools

Now it is clear that a given company may span up and over in order to grow and increase its own value proposition, e.g. enterprise platforms adding professional services.  And it is likely that start-ups will look at one of the deliverables from a fresh perspective as a way to define their white space. 

The implication is one needs to understand the core business itself when looking at a company from the outside, either as a potential client or a competitor/partner.  Depending on the frame of reference, there will be trade-offs and distinctive points-of-view.   Certain options provide unique or exclusive solutions while others provide economies of scale.  

There are a few dimensions missing from this view, maybe another post...

More Cowbell is Not the Answer

Is the best way to understand consumers to collect more data?

The idea for this came from note sent by a colleague who spoke at the CMA "Evolution of Direct Marketing Conference" this week.  The closing keynote was on the future of marketing where the answer is not more data, but rather the algorithm.  Alex Leavitt talked about the need to tell stories with data so what you do with it, and how, is more important than the amount of data on hand.

The digital world leaves an unimaginable amount of breadcrumbs that we should try to use to infer intent and context in order to improve consumer engagement.   Yet the vast majority is what can be considered "dark data" - we know its out there but have no idea where or how to use it.   So maybe we should be asking ourselves some qualifying questions first:

• Where along the journey are we likely to have the most impact?
• What decisions can we operationalize and embed in the appropriate touch points?
• What do we need to know as opposed to what could we know?

To contradict Christopher Walken in the famous SNL skit the prescription isn't more cowbell (data).

  

Targeting vs. Personalization

What is the difference between targeting and personalization?

Last week we got into a discussion over whether the mantra of CRM - right person, right channel, right time, etc. - was a question of targeting or one of personalization.  It is clear both ideas resonate in any consumer-centric marketing:   What do they actually mean?   Here's where I netted out:

• Personalization - the use of content that the consumer should recognize as 'hers'.   This runs the gamut from contact information and preferences to product purchase history.   It is a subset of the whole idea of customization that includes selection of content that she might not recognize as hers, e.g. up-sell opportunities. 
• Targeting - the identification of a group, and that includes the idea of a group of one, that should be managed and addresses as a single entity.  It offers the ability to alter the content delivered while still maintaining the ability to scale the solution.  In short, this is what one does with segmentation. 

Personalization is about content; targeting is about selection.

Now implementing either or both personalization and targeting requires an increase in dedicated resources to figure it out and implement.  So, it is still a matter of analysis as to whether or not this produces sufficient return on investment to warrant the costs involved.  

Customer Strategy - Get Emotional

Where should the emphasis be in the planning cycle?

Yesterday Jim Barnes, author of Build Your Customer Strategy, came around after a customer advisory event to share his thoughts.  His emphasis on understanding the emotional reason for shopping as well as the mechanics of developing a marketing plan was a good reminder to remember what marketing is all about - satisfying needs to everyone's mutual benefit.

His three oxymoron points were also worth a note or two.

1. Planned Spontaneity - the idea is to recognize a consumer problem that she doesn't know she has and then solve it.  Customer service stories abound around this topic but there is merit in thinking about how intermittent reinforcement as a strong motivator actually transforms into word-of-mouth.  We tell everybody about these events.
2. Future Memories - this is often the real reason we buy, particularly when it comes to disposable income.   That $50 jar of squid ink wasn't just used to make fresh pasta with octopus, it was for a dinner party with friends. 
3. Proactive Hindsight - by understanding what a consumer will think about after the purchase we can orchestrate the present help to avoid bad decisions.  This often involves providing advice and guidance as much as a product, e.g. financial services.

 In the end, it is about understanding context.

The Marketing of Beef

How does muscle become marketable meat?

In "The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A cookbook of sorts" the owner relays a story about beef.  The restaurant is proud to serve local products and when their 'Alberta Beef' is revealed as Australian heads role.  While a good restaurant story, a key question emerges from a marketing perspective:  How did Australian beef go from obscurity to being served as a unique product at one of Montreal's best restaurants?

In the last century, beef, as a category, has gone from the tragic world of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to specialty breeds like wagyu that command a significant price premium. This journey started as a means of protecting consumers when the US passed the Meat Inspection Act over 100 years ago.

Today, the processing of the muscle into meat has to meet minimum requirements which includes on-site inspectors and voluntary grading. The high fixed cost of inspection and the creation of minimum standards has led to an industry focused on supply chain and cost efficiency as a means of producing as much acceptable beef as possible.  There has been little in the way of differentiation until recently with the rise of ranch brands - often based on how the cattle are treated and fed rather than the meat itself.

Australia took another path to market.  While they have stringent quality control, they also focus a lot on consumer preferences.  In fact they have an Eating Quality Assurance program that strives to understand what consumers want to experience when eating meat.  An ethereal quality like tenderness can't be reduced to a formula based on age and marbling (although it can be measured by sheer force).  The other preferences they focus on include juiciness, flavor and overall liking.  

It is likely that it is consumer focus (and its 1,000,000 interviews) more than hard rules that has helped Australia become a major exporter of beef.

The Impact of Other Online Reviews on our Own

Do online product ratings reflect only our own experience?

As social creatures, online reviews and recommendations certainly influence our decisions.  Recent research in the Journal of Marketing goes beyond confirming that "what we read shapes what we write" to focus on the interaction between existing reviews and our own rating of a product experience.   Using a highly-rated category - hotels - the authors identified scenarios where we might increase our rating and ones when we might decrease them.

So, imagine the product has a positive rating and you go to write yours.   Here is what is likely to happen based on your experience:

Thus, it appears that social influence of existing reviews mitigates or accentuates our own ratings creating a self-adapting system.   The implication is that we need to understand the context in which the rating was given and act accordingly.   Clearly we should reach out in the event of bad experiences; it has a good chance of correcting overly strong reactions while at the same time building goodwill.

The surprise is that we should be communicating with those who are positive - because their desire to use self-expression to be unique can bring down our rating.

Our contribution to communal content is just that, a reflection of the community.


Paper is entitled: Social Influence Effects in Online Product Ratings by Sridhar and Srinivasan

What CMOs Should Learn from Chefs

What chef-like attributes are worth adopting?

First, just like launching new products restaurants may be one of the hardest markets to exist in.  The urban myths are that 90% of restaurants and 80% of new products fail. The reality is that the success rate in both categories is well above 50% for the first year.  So while the odds of success are longer than those in Las Vegas, they are still worthy pursuits and quite possibly have things in common. 

There seems to be a common set of characteristics that chefs bring to the table...

• Clarity and focus - the passion, single mindedness and very often the standards are what makes them leaders.  
• This is no different than insisting on a clear, crisp brand promise.
• Consistency - eating is a ritual, we come back for the memories, we don't want to be rudely shocked and have to reevaluate our choice.  
• This is no different than guaranteeing a consistent message and experience along the shopping journey. 
• Customer satisfaction - the best have a relentless goal of ensuring guests are enjoying themselves.  
• This is no different than being the voice of the customer. 

Some of the most interesting thinking and inspiration (not to mention food) comes from those developing street food or running food trucks.  Here are two videos of chefs talking about their craft.

• Richie Nakano of  Hapa Ramen talks about goal driven and focus based on the love of his craft.
• Roy Choi of Kogi BBQ embodies the mixing of emotion into the product and exudes a passion for what he wants to eat.

What is clearly different is that this is very personal for the chef and possibly only a day job for the CMO.

Marketing Must Deal with Turbulent Times

Why is marketing getting harder?

There is an underlying implication behind media fragmentation, social expression, and digital interactions that it is tough to be a marketer these days.  A recent report by Boston Consulting Group on how to deal with turbulence confirms this trend at the macro, industry level. 

Change is happening faster.

Over the past several decades four measures of financial performance have become  more volatile.

1. Demand is increasingly unpredictable
2. Positioning is more unstable
3. Profitability swings are larger
4. Market expectations are over/under-stated

The report goes on to highlight firms that have done better than average during turbulent times and describes five potential success factors.  Two of the five, recognizing signals and experimentation, are clearly marketing functions.   The other three, organizational, systems and ecosocial, are more likely the responsibility of the CEO.

Identifying market-changing signals can either be at the macro-level or individual level.   Services like trendwatching offer insights into how consumers are changing.  And internally, customer behavior can often be used to isolate shifts in life-stages, as Target's work on identifying pregnancy illustrates.  The function responsible for bringing insights to the table is typically in the marketing research, consumer analytic areas of the company.

Taking products to market that leverage insights is clearly a marketing function.  However, coming up with ideas to take advantage of those insights in the first place should not just be a marketing function.  It should be in the fabric of the corporate culture.   3M and Google are known for their allocation of 'think time' so that people can work on problems that interest them.   This then becomes a social exercise.   And supporting that claim, McKinsey just reported that the majority of the value of social technologies will be found in facilitating internal collaboration.  

An interesting approach would be the creation and use of 'human libraries' where the business can check out an expert.  Originating as a way to discuss prejudices, the idea easily extends to the corporate environment where new perspectives are valuable in solving challenges.   A recent viewpoint in Marketing News (not yet online) described several cases of using subject matter experts from varied disciplines - including jazz musicians to discuss improvisation with a multi-product manufacturer that had several sales people calling on one retailer. 

While marketing may be harder because what used to work might not work now, it is still filled with opportunities to help both consumers and thus companies.

Vendors Need to Think Beyond the Report

Where does a vendor's value lie?

One of things we do at work is to distribute our clients' promotional content thru a number of channels and platforms.  And a recent project we were requested to work on was simply entitled 'extract business insights'.   Since we already produce reports on activity, this left us wondering just what that might mean. 

A bit of brainstorming left us with three potential questions that could form the basis of the analysis.

• Tactical:  What worked and what should I do next?
• Acquisition: Who is a good customer and where do I find more of them?
• Strategic:  How do I compare to other players in the category?

Each of these questions could produce answers that change how we market, and thus qualify as 'insights'.  Plus, they seem to cover the potential range of interests a marketer is likely to have.   And if we can answer them satisfactorily then we have the opportunity to be a consultative partner rather than just a vendor.

Since we're a 3rd party, one of the advantages we have is to look across the market as consumers interact with various brands.   This normative view, even without identifying brands by name, is one of the key things of value we can bring to the table. 

The data requirements and time horizons are likely to be quite different than traditional reporting solutions provide.   For tactical questions - it is granular, short term and requires financial knowledge.  Did last week's offer of 'grapes' generate store traffic and sales?  Would it be better to promote 'lettuce'?  At the other end of the spectrum, strategic questions take a longer term and higher level view.  Is our merchandising strategy engaging customers better than other approaches?   In between lies the acquisition work - what consumer characteristics appear to be associated with events generated by digital content? 

Each of the questions is framed to foster discussion.  And in the end, that should be the goal of any vendor with a professional services staff.

Yet, there are still things to consider and work on:

• How does consumer behavior change over time?   (this requires a means of identifying someone across time and space)
• What is the ROI of not only the promoted item, but the basket? (this requires linking from the offer all the way thru to the basket)
• Are deal sensitive consumers valuable in the long term? (this requires both of the above fixes)

Pine Creek Fire

What happened on my summer vacation?

Usually this blog is about my day job - marketing, technology, data, etc.   Today it is a bit more personal.  

Just south of town a forest fire started on Wednesday and has grown from 20 acres to 12,000 in less than 48 hours.   Not only did the fire run up the drainage toward the tops of the mountains, but it also ran south as the winds shifted around.

Livingston Enterprise Photo

And when you know the people who live in the house in the picture and they're planning on evacuating their horses, possessions and memories this kind of news takes on a whole new perspective.  

We had a barbecue last night and it offered a respite to a few of those who couldn't return home and didn't yet know when they could.  Glad we could offer a small community of support to our friends.

Speaking of community, the news of the fire spread quickly on social media - particularly on Facebook - with support, best wishes, and offers of assistance coming from all locations.   The 'chatter' as it was called by officials unfortunately had many inaccurate statements about the burning of particular buildings and the loss of life.   While some structures were lost no one perished in the blaze.   The lesson is to take such news with a dose of skepticism. 

Hopefully the cooler weather with slow this beast down.

Seven Things Marketing Should Know About Big Data

What are the key points to remember about Big Data?

1. The migration to a digital and interactive world creates breadcrumbs of all types everywhere; this in turn dramatically increases the velocity, variety and volume of data.   We need to rethink just what it means to be data.  
2. Big Data is so big that our historic view of processing it - requirements, capture, analysis - just doesn't work anymore.   For those of us who grew up in the marketing database era, we have to completely rethink our relationship with IT.  And IT will have to rethink its role.
3. The idea of Big Data will go thru the typical hype-cycle where it becomes the topic of conferences, technology pitches, and bloggers (including me).  Thus, it will mean different things to different people and that requires patience and a steady hand to navigate.
4. Like all large, complex, and fast moving worlds the best approach is to have a clear objective in mind before you start.  Set the goal first to help deal with the really messy aspect of Big Data - access and transformation.
5. Since the majority of the Big Data is now created 'out there' rather than from just buying stuff from us we have the ability to understand the path to purchase much better than ever before.  New understanding of what happens at each step in the journey will be required thru 'moment' or 'value' mapping exercises.
6. Given that we want to derive insights from Big Data, the deployment methods will have to change.  We can't assemble in a conference room to discuss changes in offers and messaging - we must learn to trust the data and let it decide within a framework.  Predictive analytics will be operational, not project-based. 
7. Your brand promise will have a strong guiding hand on how you leverage Big Data. Understanding what benefit consumers takeaway from your product or service will help you decide how best to facilitate their journey and choice.

The New Face of Database Marketing

Where is database marketing headed?

In the beginning database marketing was defined as

"Database Marketing is an interactive approach to marketing, which uses the individually addressable marketing media and channels ... to extend help to a company's target audience; to stimulate their demand; and to stay close to them..."

That was written just about 25 years ago and still resonates today.   What has changed dramatically is what it means to be 'individually addressable'.   The newest Facebook feature, Page Post Targeting Enhanced, allows messages to be posted to the news feeds of specific segments of people based on a wider variety of demographic information, but not 'likes' at the moment.   Before this the best we could do to narrow the audience was by language and location.  Thus, the FB news feed, once a broadcast tool, now qualifies as a database marketing tactic.

But that's not all.

On the flip side is the opportunity to serve different content at different frequencies to different segments.  So, rather than thinking linearly about who should receive our offers, we need to think in terms of a matrix - which segments get which offers?  This is beginning to sound like how we think about other digital marketing tools where offers or ads are dynamically generated based on context, consumer, and intent.  The implication is that database marketing skills should be combined with digital marketers in a direct-to-consumer function.   Their responsibility is to place offers along the shopping journey that help, stimulate, or connect with the target.

Now, if we combine the legacy of database marketing - using a customer's transaction history to do it 'right' - with the new digital capabilities some new ideas emerge.  Imagine a news feed of

• Recipes augmented by offers based on your previous purchases and content consumption
• Books or music recommendations based on interests, current collection, and friends' lists
• Exclusive content and promotional tie-ins from sponsors of events

For any brand considering these ideas, they should have a large fan base.  Thus, an integral part of the social media plan should be on acquisition - just like database marketing. 

Relevance vs. Incentive

What are we trying to achieve with relevance?

The typical phrase used to describe content is 'be relevant' but what is discussed around content tends to be offer-related.  A lot charts that appear in retail research and presentations suggest that consumers want offers, deals and promotions.  But is that all we mean by the phrase 'relevant content'? 

Some definitions first:

• Relevant refers to being 'pertinent to the matter at hand'.  
  
• Incentive refers to 'stimulating action or effort'.

It is likely true that as consumers we prefer retailers that apply business rules to the potential offer pool to ensure we find things of interest, i.e. personalized coupons based on transaction history.  And it is a small logical leap to go from using the term personalized to relevant.  

While custom coupons are relevant; is all relevant content necessarily promotional?  

It seems that our point of view need not to be the same when it comes to relevant vs. promotional content.   In the first case we need to understand what the consumer is trying to achieve; in the second case we need to serve our best option to generate an event or transaction.  Similar, but not quite the same.   In fact, there may be other types of content that are appropriate depending on the context of the situation.  And it is context, both the consumers and ours, that should shape our content strategy.  

If we want to help her, be relevant by first understanding what she is trying to achieve.
If we want a sale, offer incentives that make sense to her and mitigate the risks of decisions.

So, let's first be clear about what we're trying to achieve.

Context Generates Big Data

Where does "Big Data" come from?

Lots of discussion these days about "Big Data."  A technical term that made its way fairly rapidly into the daily discourse.   Simply put, big data is the result of the increasing velocity, variety and volume of information being generated as we act like cyborgs.   A recent NYT article describes how we got here and what the opportunities might hold for businesses.  

On the one side of the real are the half-empties who worry that the term 'big' is another nefarious character who wants to control our lives - brother, government, and oil come to mind.  This is the central argument around behavioral targeting - too much data is a bad thing.  For the half-full's amongst us, big data allows for some interesting concepts for marketers, not only in terms of relevance but also in terms of incentive. 

One current idea being tested is the creation of personalized pricing where everything that is known, inferred or surmised about an individual is used to set the prices a specific customer sees. These price differences may be in flyers, coupons, or at the shelf. And since smart phones are the new decision support platform prices could be different in and out of the store. 

The mantra of delivering relevant content to the right person at the right time in the right place means context matters.

And thus it is context, and the need to understand it in real time, that drives big data.

Customer Replacement Therapy

Where do we need to focus our attention?

In many circles the discussion focuses on customer loyalty; it sounds so good.   But the reality is that we lose far more customers on the way to loyalty than we care to admit.  In fact, the odds run 19 to 1 against.

First, just what do we mean by loyal?

Like many concepts in marketing it can be elusive to define what we mean.  For this post, I'm going to define it simply:  A customer is loyal if the probability of another visit exceeds 60% so a bit better than flipping a coin.

Since we tend to be creatures of habit, the probability of shopping somewhere is fairly predictable at least in aggregate.   In fact, we can fit a curve to estimate the number of future transactions a business is likely to have from a cohort of new customers.

The picture shows the results of estimating how many future transactions a group of new customers will make over the next year or so.  The steep drop off from 0 to 1 is quite typical and is a function of the category purchase cycle.  But the crux of the matter is very clear, a lot of people simply don't come back for a second visit.

Given the definition of loyalty above, that doesn't happen until the 4th transaction or higher where the step change from one transaction to the next starts to get small.

The implication:  We go thru a lot of customers to get to one loyal customer.   To see the effect of this curve on a business, imagine starting with 50,000 customers and we want to know how the business looks after 10 years.  In particular,

• How many loyal customers do we have?
• How much focus do we need to spend on acquisition?

The following table simulates the above curve over time and shows the number of expected customers each year by the their visit number.

After 10 years, fewer than 5% of our customers are loyal.   More importantly, 60% of our business comes from new customers. 

So, rather than burn thru bodies to get to loyalty maybe we should think more about our replacement strategy. 

• Why do over half of our customers fail to come back?  How did we disappoint them?
• Why does it take so long to go from trial to loyalty? What are people thinking at each stage?
• What is the essence of our offering that makes the decision to repeat a no-brainer?

Impossible Marketing

What does a walk-in computer have to do with marketing?

Recently a colleague circulated Joel Runyon's chance encounter with Russell Kirsch the inventor of the first internally programmable computer who pretty much summed up his view as: "nothing is withheld from us which we have conceived to do." 

Or, just do the impossible.

And to put a finer point on the idea of conceiving something never done before he also created the first digital image.  And 50 years later we're still living with the square pixel - it was 'logical' to use.

While the storyline centers on computers, particularly those we can use to create stuff versus merely being consumers, the idea clearly extends beyond code and technology.

In fact, this mantra describes the entrepreneurial spirit pretty and should be applied to marketing as well.  The digital era creates the perception and need to both re-imagine how things work and then solve the consumer's need for solutions.

So, what should marketers conceive in the new ROPO world of researching online, purchasing offline that many might deem impossible?  A couple of recurring themes.

• Altering the product assortment that a consumer recently browsed.
• Surrounding the consumer with real content that actually helps her choose.
• Leveraging purchase and event histories to create a media plan for one.

While there are technical challenges; these are not technology problems.   They simply require a will and persistence to overcome.

What would you think would be impossible?

Choice Marketing

What is the next evolution of marketing?

It has been said a million times: Marketers are no longer in control.  Self-expression, technology and media fragmentation have fundamentally altered the flow of information.  As a result we live in a "fluxed-up world" (found that on an agency bio) which is a bit more earthy and descriptive than the fluid fog.

So, if we're not doing business as usual then we shouldn't be doing marketing as usual.  So, what augments Brand Marketing, Direct Response Marketing, Content Marketing, etc.?

How about 'choice marketing'?

People are going to make choices, they will decide regardless of what we do.  Since we can't limit the information they use to reach their conclusion or where they access it, let's flip the table and ask the question:  What can a brand do to facilitate a person's choice?  How do we make it easy to choose us?

• Do we understand the needs and aspirations?
• Do we know the intent of each interaction along a journey?
• Do we know the emotional and rational drivers of the decision?
• Do we know how various types of content influence that decision?
• Do we understand why and how a consideration set is formed?
• Do we know the shortcuts people take in making a decision?

Since a brand is a proxy for information (Chris Anderson from wired's view) or an emotional short cut to a decision (my view) maybe a brand is simply in the information business; it is an aggregator and sometimes filter. 

Actually, 'choice marketing' would be what an agency would sell to its clients.   An altogether different view would be to focus on 'facilitating choice'.   While the wording change may seem simple, the implications of taking the consumer's point of view could be rather striking.  

Retail isn't About Shopping Anymore

What happened to shopping at retail?

Nicholas Negroponte once wrote...

You enter a store. You see something you like. You write down the product name and manufacturer. You go home and order it over the Internet. As a result, you didn't have to carry it, you probably got a better price, and you may have avoided sales tax.

The store in this scenario is merely a showroom. Have I just described the exception to tomorrow's retail, or the rule?

Except for that 'write down the product name' he got it about right.  In their third annual update on the future of something, PSFK highlights the new trends for retail that take advantage of technological changes since 1998.

PSFK presents Future of Retail Report 2012 from PSFK

The ideas center on one theme - make it easier to choose by blending the best aspects of digital and physical experiences.