MBA Update: Omni-Channel Retailing

The digital marketing concentration of my online MBA program at Montclair State University started in March and the first two classes were super interesting. The Omni-Channel Retailing course, taught by Dr. Archana Kumar, explored the current retail landscape of brick-and-mortar stores, online stores, mobile shopping experiences, and how all these channels combine. If you know me, you know I love to shop, so reading, writing, and learning about retailers was very exciting.

Course Description

“A significant subset of digital marketing is determining the right retail channels to distribute the product. The objective of this course is to understand digital retailing and provide insights to be successful in an omni-channel environment in terms of pricing, distribution, and merchandising strategies. The course will also identify digital retailing revenue and business models while focusing on intricacies of omni-channel retailing such as product presentation, web page presentation, product fulfillment/delivery, inventory management, dynamic pricing, and customer service.”

Retailing Case Studies

• Dot.com: Online pet retailing – remember the pets.com sock puppet? A super interesting case after working at Petco corporate.
• JC Penney’s Fair and Square Strategy – when JC Penney stopped having sales … and customers revolted.

A few lessons from class

• The basic elements of retailing and online retailing
• The transformation of multi-channel retailing to omni-channel retailing
• Factors responsible for successful omni-channel strategies
• Ways in which omnichannel retailers integrate pricing, branding, merchandising, promotions, social media marketing, email marketing, and fulfillment strategies across channels.
• Micro-moments
• Pricing influencers and strategy
• Difficulties dealing with returns
• Difficulties with coordinating inventory across multiple channels
• Determining which merchandise to carry in each channel

You may see some of my assignments from class posted here as blogs in the future.

I started an online MBA at Montclair State University in January 2017.