“You must offer all sorts of value beyond the literal merchandise. Being big will not save you.”
In 1998, Nicholas Negroponte, one of the founders of the MIT media lab, foresaw the future of the retail industry (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.07/negroponte.html ). He pointed out that, with the advent of the internet, going to a bookshop had become the least convenient method of buying a book because “all the elements are against you: weather, time, energy, price not to mention availability. The real product is not mere paper and ink but a place to conduct educational and social entertainment.”
Wide-format printers that plan to avoid the fate of independent booksellers (50% of whom have shut in the last ten years in the UK) might want to heed Negroponte’s prophetic warning that it is the customer experience that makes all the difference. Many management gurus now suggest that customer service is the most compelling competitive advantage a company can have in the 21st century. Luckily, the standard of customer service in the UK is so abysmal that you don’t have to try too hard to stand out.
The retail industry, which buys an awful lot of wide-format print, is using everything from QR codes, Near Field Communications and smartphone apps to understand its customers. With all kinds of parties – from Ricky Gervais to Orange and Antiques Roadshow – launching smartphone apps, would this approach work for printers? The right app could be simply be one that helps customers use your company’s services or to adapt the thinking behind RR Donnelley’s $2.5m investment in the iPad catalogue shopping app Coffee Table (http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/03/coffeetable-series-a/ ), an app that helps your customers service their customers.
Might be worth a punt.