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Retail Journalist, Analyst and Research Director, Miya Knights

Today’s retail environment and the driving forces revolutionizing it

Our guest is Miya Knights, retail journalist, analyst and research director specializing in retail enterprise technology. Prior to her role as Head of Industry Insight at Eagle Eye Solutions, she has held roles as Global Technology Research Director at Planet Retail and Senior Research Analyst with IDC Retail Insights. Miya also owns and publishes RetailTechnology.co.uk and is ranked one of Vend’s top 50 retail influencers. Join us as we explore Miya’s two recently published bestselling books and the driving forces revolutionizing it today’s retail environment.

Episode 13 of RETHINK Retail was recorded on June 27, 2019

Post Transcript

Julia Raymond:
Hi. Today we’re kicking off another episode of RETHINK Retail with my guest Miya Knights. She is head of industry insight for Eagle Eye Solutions and has 20 years experience as a journalist, analyst and research director specializing in retail enterprise technology. Just this year, she co-authored and published two bestselling books. The first, titled Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce. And more recently, the book Omnichannel Retail: How To Build Winning Stores In A Digital World. Today, we’ll explore both books, focusing on Omnichannel as well as the environment driving what Miya has called ‘Retail Darwinism: Evolve or Die’. Miya, will you tell us more about yourself and how the ideas for the books came about?

Miya Knights:
Absolutely. Hello and thanks for the opportunity. In terms of how the book came about, I co-authored the book with a fellow former research director who’d already written a book about Walmart a few years previously when Walmart became the biggest retailer in the world. As Amazon has been growing exponentially fast towards becoming one of the biggest retailers in the world, she suggested that the time is right to give Amazon the same Walmart type of treatment in terms of what was their secret sauce, what was it about their business model, what was it about their innovation and development that made them world leaders. And to take that treatment to the Amazon model.

But to her credit, my co-author Natalie knew that while she understood how Amazon ran its business as a retailer, she didn’t really fully understand, because it wasn’t part of her core remit, what role the technology had had to play. And obviously Amazon is famously well-known for its technology disruption. So to her credit, she came and asked if I would be able to help fill in the gaps around web services, cloud computing, drones, one-click payments and the rest. And so we wrote the book in about six months, but we actually found out we’d got the commission a couple of days after the acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods was announced. So we kind of knew we were onto something big when that happened, because I think what we’ve seen since then is that acquisition really shake up the biggest retail sector of them all, and that’s the packaged foods sector, the grocery sector, and really prove that we were onto … we were tapping a rich vein in terms of what is it that has made Amazon so successful that other retailers can learn from and use as well.

Julia Raymond:
Great, well it’s really good background and I think the book is really timely and just published this year, so some really relevant and recent insights. I actually downloaded it on my Kindle and I’m reading it. I encourage all of our listeners to do the same. Some really good stuff. You explore the e-commerce giant’s disruptive new retail strategies and the impact on the wider e-commerce sector. And grocery comes up a bit. So that’s one thing I kind of wanted to start with, because we actually had an expert panel discussion podcast a few weeks back and we talked a bit about grocery. And one thing that was said is they’re not as great as selling baskets on Amazon, so if you want to buy, I think it was Bryan Gildenberg of Kantar Consulting, he said “if you want to buy 20 things on Amazon, it takes exactly 20 times as long as buying one thing.” So there’s a little bit of a disadvantage in that regard. But then you also make a great point in your book.

You said Amazon is holding all the cards because they’re generating revenue from their advertising, but they’re simultaneously optimizing the placement of their private label products, and maximizing conversion. Giving that badge denoting that their item is a bestseller. So I think they have a lot of interesting plays on digital. But when it comes to the physical stores, what is your take overall when it comes to Amazon and grocery?

Miya Knights:
So taking a step back, Natalie and I very strongly concluded in concert that, having written the book, that actually Amazon is a tech company first and a retailer second. And that’s relevant to answering your question, because I think when it comes to really honing those merchant curation skills that traditional brick and mortar retailers kind of take for granted, Amazon is found a little bit lacking. So you said that your panel discussion around grocery kind of started to touch on some of the disadvantages that Amazon has. I think generally speaking, because Amazon grew up on the internet, it wanted to crack the business of selling on the internet and now that it wants to move into physical stores, it’s actually found itself in a space where it’s lacking the traditional skills that retailers take for granted.

I think if you look at the brick and mortar experimentation, maybe barring Amazon Go, you’ll find a lot of the ports of Amazon’s in-store experience actually being quite soulless and not really able to surprise and delight the way that traditional brick and mortar retailers might think that they could. And the final point to that would be that generally speaking, that is a reflection of the experience that you actually have on their site as well, which is very, very functional and not terribly fun. And that’s great when you’re online and you’re in the comfort of your own home and you’ve got a potentially unlimited amount of time to filter and to open many tabs and pages and so on and so forth, but when you literally have a limited amount of time in a physical space, it really does test those merchant curation skills. And I think we’re seeing a replication of that really functional experience that Amazon’s honed so well online being replicated in the store. Just not sure that the store experience and environment is the best place for that purely functional experience from a customer standpoint.

Julia Raymond:
That makes sense. So you’re basically saying that they’re excellent at the functional side of things, the transactional side, but surprising and delighting customers in a physical space like the best retailers have been able to do, is something that they’re really struggling with. I wanted to move just to another, it was on page 73 of your book, because this brings another factor at play here which is obviously shipping, which Amazon’s created kind of the golden standard for, and some would say even changed the mindset of a lot of consumers. And you say that “today, near instant gratification is a firmly embedded customer expectation, as other retailers have had no choice but to invest in next-day and increasingly same-day delivery capabilities.” Then you say “the problem? It’s not sustainable.” And then you talk about some of the first cracks that we’re already seeing being exposed by Amazon, which you say they’re very open about, but can you describe a bit about that?

Miya Knights:
Yeah, absolutely. Immediacy of one hour and same-day delivery has kind of opened Pandora’s Box and it can’t be closed again in that sense. Consumers’ expectations have been extremely heightened in that sense, and that’s why online is seen as a direct challenge, I think, to the stores’ proxy for relevance because of its proximity and the immediacy that you get when you walk out of a store having bought something, rather than waiting for it to be delivered. By narrowing that last mile delivery window and really making it much, much faster, Amazon set the expectation but then now has to continue to meet that demand, continue to exceed that expectation, even though the costs of fulfilling those expectations go up exponentially.

I think that’s why we’ve seen Amazon really invest just vast amounts of its cash into a vertically integrated carrier, fulfillment and supply chain system. You’ve seen them invest in their own cargo planes. You’ve seen them get a huge amount of federal funding for airport hubs as well. And I think you’ve seen general merch, from grocers to general merchandisers, really take the fight to Amazon on this one and really ramp up their rapid delivery capabilities, either through third party partnerships. You’ve seen the likes of Instacart and Shipt really grow their business off the back of maybe what we should call the Amazon effect when it comes to the last mile. And you’ve seen some innovative developments as well say, in the U.K. Morrison’s rolling out its own rapid delivery capability with Amazon and expanding that only very recently. So there’s been many different ways that retailers have tried to tackle the last mile issue.

Julia Raymond:
Yeah, and I love all the examples you brought up of what other retailers are doing to deliver on the same standard that Amazon has shown when it comes to the last mile. Do you see any sort of crazy innovations in the future that will help with the issue of margins that you talked about? I’ve heard someone say that eventually we’ll have even some infrastructure for automated vehicles to deliver groceries to certain hubs. And just crazy ideas.

Miya Knights:
Yeah, gosh. Sometimes I think Amazon puts out patents just to get column inches. You made me think of the airships that could, drones, I think that was last year, wasn’t it? I still get asked “are we going to see drones swarming our main streets anytime soon?” And that might not be the case, but we’re definitely, definitely going to see more autonomous delivery vehicles in and around our urban areas initially, just to be able to eliminate human error, reduce margins by not having to pay for human labor, and then also in more remote areas, we’re going to see larger drones used to deliver very time sensitive or high value products as well. So things like medication, for example. So we’ve seen delivered to your car.

Obviously Amazon made that huge acquisition with Ring technology, smart doorbells, so that you can have products delivered into your home. Similarly Walmart recently talked about delivering your groceries to your fridge, and that was met with varying degrees of acceptance and ridicule. In China, there’s a really interesting example being piloted by the European grocery group Auchan, who also has quite a large banner presence in China. And they’ve been using an automated delivery system built into a mobile store that’s called BingoBox. You scan and go with your mobile phone. It’s also equipped with drones in the roof that will dispatch small items. It also has solar panels, and it uses a lot of the elements, a lot of the technology elements that we cover in the Amazon book, but actually bringing it to the consumer in a local, mobile, autonomous format. So I think that’s the ultimate kind of apotheosis of all the development that you asked me to discuss.

Julia Raymond:
From a little research online, I discovered that BingoBox is the lesser known rival technology of Amazon Go, which only has 11 locations to date. BingoBox? They have over 500 cashier-less convenience stores, and according to the Retail Insight Network, has expanded from its domestic Chinese market into Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia, with plans to roll out in Japan and Australia. I wanted to look into how it works. Here’s an example: Say it’s Monday morning and you’re walking to the office. Suddenly, you feel your stomach rumble and you remember that you haven’t had breakfast. You see the BingoBox at the corner of the street: A modest 160 square feet, just over a tenth of the size of your typical 7-Eleven or convenience store, and you head there straight away.

Before you get to the entrance, you’ve already opened your BingoBox phone app. Once at the door, you use your phone camera within the app to scan the small screen on BingoBox showing its QR code. Once scanned, the door opens up and you grab a water bottle and a granola bar. To check out, you place your two items inside of the scanner, which sort of resembles an illuminated box maybe one foot high and wide and one foot deep. Then, you submit payment via the app. To leave the store, you stand in front of a camera that uses facial recognition to verify your purchase before unlocking the exit.

Now, with Amazon Go, you would not need to manually scan or manually pay for your items. But this technology is still efficient and has scaled quickly, so I wanted to provide some context. And with that, let’s resume the episode.

Julia Raymond:
I love the BingoBox example. I have seen one video, I think, that was demoing it. Are these just food items? I would think they’d have to be higher margin items for the BingoBox to be profitable in any way.

Miya Knights:
In that sense, you’re right. It’s a bit like Amazon Go. I keep pointing out to people that Amazon probably can’t make the return on investment work for all that computer vision technology that runs Amazon Go in a format that’s any bigger than it is with products that have less margin than prepared salads and things like that. Similarly for BingoBox, they’d be higher priced, higher margin convenience goods that are predicated on you needing it now. “I need a toothbrush now. I need something absolutely now.” That’s really the only way the high cost of the technology deployment stacks up in that way.

Julia Raymond:
Right. I imagine that there’s just high premiums you pay for that kind of convenience and on-demand delivery through the automated system. Yeah, that makes sense. I love how you mentioned scan and go, because that moves us to the next question I wanted to ask regarding app strategy, because you actually co-authored another book. It’s called Omnichannel Retail: How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World. You highlight the importance of bringing the power of digital and the omnichannel experience to everyday shopping.

I’ve just seen a lot of stuff going on in the app world with retailers, and I wanted to ask you: Do you think a single app strategy makes sense? Just the context, that’s one main consumer-facing app that allows them to engage with the retailer’s product or brand. Or, is it better to have multiple apps that are highly specific to a product or an offering?

Miya Knights:
I think this is a great question. I think what we’ve seen is a lot of experimentation, which has led to a lot of proliferation of apps. Let’s take, for example, Sam’s Club or IKEA. IKEA is a great example. They’ve got their standalone design and planning app that uses augmented reality. Then, they’ve got their shopping app. I think the way that the technology’s developed at different speeds, let’s say ecommerce versus AR design, has necessitated that retailers split out the functionality that they’re offering us via mobile in this way.

If one as a retailer, I should say, finds success in some of these features and functionalities, down the road I think that we’re now seeing, as a result of all that experimentation and the maturation of the technologies themselves, is them now being consolidated into single apps. We as consumers, we don’t really want to have to download three or four apps in order to deal with one brand. Just as we say with omnichannel being one channel seamless, there are no multiple channels, we as customers are channel-blind, in the same way we’re not really going to understand why we need to have five or six different apps. Just put them all in one.

I also think just in terms of that consolidation and the maturation of the technology, the devices themselves have also hugely matured. The ability to be able to have a loyalty app that can be transactional, that can have geolocation in it, but that allows me to push that loyalty card into my passbook for Apple, for example. My wallet. Then, be able to scan that at the till, for example. All of those capabilities, perhaps, weren’t necessarily available in the leading mobile devices until very, very recently, and so that’s another reason why we’ve seen a bifurcation of these features and functionality between the different apps.

But as I said, we as customers are brand blind and channel blind. If you’ve got one brand, then talk to me with one brand. Talk to me with one app, and that’s why we’re seeing the consolidation we’re seeing. It’s what customers want.

Julia Raymond:
Yeah. It makes sense that you mentioned the technology. Sometimes it makes it almost impossible to go about experimenting unless you have all the different apps, like with the AR capabilities that IKEA’s rolled out. I think that’s a really good point to think about. Just speaking of omnichannel, I just wanted to throw this question out there to see if there’s an interesting opposing viewpoint or not, because we recently had Steve Dennis on our podcast episode 11, and he asserts that omnichannel is dead.

He says, “A great customer experience has never been about being everyone and being all things for all people. What matters is showing up for the right customers where it really matters in remarkable ways,” which he’s coining “harmonized retail.” For you, Miya, is this just semantics, or is there really a difference in thinking?

Miya Knights:
I think it’s a bit of both, to be fair. Actually, full disclosure, when the publisher suggested omnichannel retailers as the title, I objected quite strongly, actually, because I thought it is a little bit of a zombie term. I mean, I was lucky enough to work with the senior research analyst, who I think is now VP at IDC, Leslie Hand, who first used the term ‘omnichannel’ in a report. Believe it or not, that was 16 years ago.

Julia Raymond:
Oh, wow.

Miya Knights:
I thought, people are going to love or hate what we describe as a marmite word. You love it or you hate it. But to the publisher’s credit, they said that that was exactly the reason why they wanted it, because it would spark debate and it would allow us to have this discussion that we’re having now. Answering your question directly after giving you that background, yes, it is a semantic thing. But I think you have to take something from the fact that this word has hung around. This descriptor has been around for almost two decades. I think it’s a testament to the speed or lack or speed with which retailers have really embraced the spirit of what omnichannel is.

I think I would also say midway between semantics and there being a need for a term that people can buy into is the fact that to say to be everywhere for everybody all the time is actually an incorrect definition of omnichannel. Omni being the Latin root all one, which is interchangeable, literally builds on the fact that, as I said earlier, customers don’t see channel. It’s just one brand. It’s just one retailer. Whether or not I transact with you online or shop with you in store, you’re still that one retailer.

Full disclosure here, Leslie please get in contact if I get this wrong, but I really don’t think the intention was ever, with omnichannel, to suggest that retailers should be everywhere. It’s that retailers should be consistent and seamless and integrated wherever they are. In terms of needing a term like omnichannel, retailers are past masters at following the customer. If the customer is going online, I will set up an online channel. It’s being where the customer wants you to be in an integrated, coherent, and seamless way, with a total proposition that does not differentiate between the services and product you offer online versus the services and products you offer in store.

Final point, though: Moving from semantics to the fact that we do need a term that people are going to buy into, there are so many new terms that are coming out. I hear the total retail, new retail …

What you don’t want to be as a retailer right now is mediocre. You don’t want to be disjointed. I don’t know that the industry’s ever going to coalesce around a term that works for everybody. I think omnichannel has worked for so long it’s actually got a little bit of context to it in that it has been around for so long.

But at the same time, I agree that maybe it’s time we do move on from that. But I don’t think we can until retailers really get what it meant in the first place, which is to be consistent wherever the customer touchpoint is that you want to engage with that customer through.

Julia Raymond:
While we discuss the word omnichannel and the thoughts around it, I want to touch back on some of the topics from your book, which was published April this year. You talk about how retail needs a mobile makeover. I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by that.

Miya Knights:
Absolutely. It built really well on that theme around omnichannel and what that means, regardless of whether or not you love it or hate it as a word, to be consistent at every customer touchpoint. It doesn’t mean you have to have every customer touchpoint and be everywhere to everybody, but what’s relevant for your customers if they want to engage with you through a particular channel, then it makes sense to follow the customer and make sure that they’re there.

What we’ve seen over the last 15 years as, I think, we referred to when we talked a little bit about Amazon, was just the way internet-based technologies and mobile technologies has increased the level of access, speed, convenience, choice, relevance, transparency, I could go on, that we as consumers have become accustomed to. The problem occurs when we go into the store, the physical, traditional store. It really doesn’t match up to the same levels of speed and choice and convenience and relevancy that we can create for ourselves through our online shopping journeys.

The point that my Omnichannel Retailer coauthor, Tim Mason, makes very very strongly is that I can use Google to navigate me to my nearest store selling a particular product I’m looking for. I would add to that that Google, through to the end of 2017, actually tracked a 500% increase in near me searches. That is, Google searches that say, “I need to find X X near me,” that contained a variant of “to buy” or “to purchase,” which shows that people are using their mobile phones as an extension of the shopping processes that they’ve become accustomed to digitally in their own homes to augment their physical shopping journeys, too. To act as an aid in regards to the immediacy of finding a store, finding a product, and walking out with it.

But the point that Tim makes, and I totally agree with him so strongly, is that I can have Google navigate me to the front door of that store, but I put my phone away when I go inside. Now, that might be music to some people’s ears, but to other people, I hate having to rely on printed analog signage. I hate having to wait until I see a human being where I can ask, “Where is this product? Why I’m lost, or can you tell me a bit more about this?” Or paper shelf edge labels that are out of date or paper price tags that have fallen off the product. I think the point that we try and make really strongly in Omnichannel Retail is that there is a huge place for digital in today’s physical stores, and that retailers really need to add a digital layer to their stores via the handsets that we are never without. That we maintain, that we keep up to date, that we charge, that we secure.

In order to add that extra layer of speed and convenience and transparency and personalization as well, to the physical store experience as we would expect with the digital experience. We’re seeing bits and pieces of this happen in piecemeal, but I don’t know that any retailer has truly embraced digital via mobile in their stores to offer us as consumers, a comparable in-store experience as to the ones that we have online.

Julia Raymond:
What are some challenges that retailers face that are preventing mobile from being further along? Is it regional differences with store layouts in product inventory that’s really challenging on the back end? Or what are some things going on?

Miya Knights:
Well, I think you can’t life and shift a successful digital and e-commerce strategy onto a store network, for some of the very reasons that you’ve already outlined, you know, a browser is the same, or a mobile device barring some mobile device manufacturer differences, tend to be the same standard technologies wherever you go in the world, so creating an online presence and porting that, localizing it, is much, much easier than it is to retro fit WiFi access points into a department store that was built in the 1920s and is about as WiFi friendly as an oven.

So, there is you know, you’ve got different formats, different sizes, the suitability of the construction of the building, to actually accommodating modern technologies, there’s all that to take into account. But what we really try and impress upon retailers in OmniChannel Retail is that they can’t afford not to try and tackle this problem. And actually, I’ve some to conclude that retailers have kind of got a bit distracted by all the shiny, double digit growth happening online, and again as I’ve already said, they’ve been absolutely right to follow consumer there, but they’ve kind of let both their customer-facing physical store stay and the back of this supply chain and distribution networks that serve them fall by the wayside as a result. And this is why I think it’s fair to say, the store can be fairly described as a digital black hole, and it’s also why we are seeing such margin pressure brought to bear with the shortening of the last mile, the speeding up of the last mile as well.

It’s because the store assets and supply chain networks have kind of been slightly neglected all of these years, and I do start to see now that the dial is turning. I always point to some brilliant research brought out by the Harvard Business Review, a couple of years ago. Brilliant because it surveyed 46,000 US consumers, the largest pool of consumer research I’ve seen dedicated to omnichannel retail. And what did it find? It basically found that those consumers who shop with a retailer across more than one channel are worth up to more 10% more shopping visit online and 4% more per shopping visit in store than those customers who use one single channel. I think retailers can see that now, from their own data. But the fact is, just going back to my anecdote about Google and ‘near me’ search, and you know, all of that capability stopping at the front door of the store, if they accept that their best customers are ones that shop with them across all channels or multiple channels, more than one, they can’t actually identify who those best customers are when they’re in their physical stores.

So they can roll out the red carpet for you when you’re online, “Welcome back! We saw you bought this, why not buy this, here’s an offer, blah, blah, blah.” But when I walk into their store, unless they give me a reason to get my mobile out and identify myself, like you would at the end of a shopping journey with a traditional loyalty card, for example, they don’t even know that you’ve been there. So how can they cross an up sell to me in a personalized, one-to-one way? That is similar to the way that they would want to try and sell to me online. And that’s the opportunity and at the moment, unfortunately, retailer’s digital capability severely lags that opportunity in the physical store.

Julia Raymond:
Right, so you’re saying there’s a huge opportunity that retailers are missing by not being able to identify these you know, high-revenue customers, maybe some of their best customers, that are shopping across multiple, if not all channels that they offer. And that personalization maybe is missing in store?

Miya Knights:
Absolutely. You know, we’ve also done some research, myself and Tim with the company we work for Eagle Eye, into what customers actually want. And when we asked customers, what are your greatest influences of your choice of retailer, number one, far and away, amongst 90% of the 4000 consumers that we surveyed across the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, was price. No surprises there. Price is still the lowest common denominator. And I’ve done this survey in different variations over the years, a number of times, and this time I was really surprised to see that top, the two other most important influencers that rounded out that top three were, that offers me promotions or a loyalty scheme or rewards, that was number two. And number three, that recognizes me for my custom. So I actually kind of see number two and number three as two sides of the same coin, because if I recognize you from my custom, I’m probably offering you incentives and giving you rewards as a result. But the fact is, the way that a lot of retail stores are run at the moment, I could be your best customer, but I will get exactly the same service as a completely anonymous customer that never identifies themselves to you, that hasn’t registered online, that just pays in cash.

And even if I am your best customer, you’re only identifying me as a swipe my loyalty card, as I walk out the store. And so you’re missing a trick there, to be able to give customers more of what they want, which is if you can’t beat your competitors on price, you can give them an offer or a reward, or promotion that shows that you recognize them for their continued custom and thanks them for that.

Julia Raymond:
Yeah, and that’s a really good point, just why would someone be incentivized to give their information if there’s no upside. And you say, in your book that 90% of transactions are still completed in the physical store, so there’s a huge gap here. And you also say view digital as opportunity instead of a threat, and would you describe a little bit more of that, how digitization can foster these more meaningful connections?

Miya Knights:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to the discussions that a lot of people in the industry are having around Amazon. I think they see digital and Amazon as a representation of that, as a threat. But when you look at where Amazon is, it’s at an inflection point in its 25-year history, where it now actually needs offline. It now realizes that it’s only capturing 10% of those total retail sales in any of the markets and territories it operates in. That if it’s to capture the other 90% or part of that other 90%, it also needs stores as well. So retailers really need to start to, I think they do, they are starting to understand how much of an advantage their stores are, but in the balance of things, in terms of the channel mix, we’ve seen retailers not only neglect the digitalization of their stores, but also neglect the right sizing of their store channel.

So one of the things I often say, is that you can broadly characterize a lot of Main Street retailers at the moment, particularly ones that are struggling, as over-stored and under-performing. They might be pulling in double digit growth from their e-commerce channels, but they really need to be able to see how those two, how the online and the offline channels mix, how their retail customers are using the channels together, and make sure as a result that they’ve got the optimal mix and location of stores to their best customers online as well. I don’t see a lot of retailers thinking in that way, but there’s an opportunity there for stores to really take what we’ve learned from online, augment it, make it even better, and layer it with that sensory selection, the immediacy, the capability to try before you buy, and also let’s not forget you know, the absolutely invaluable asset of a store’s people being subject matter experts, even if they’re not subject matter experts, the possibility exists for the retailer to give them a mobile device that allows them to access the same information that we have access to.

But communicate it to us in a one-to-one way. I don’t think we’re ever going to get away from the importance of human interaction in that sense, and that’s another reason why the store is so important, and is worth investing in from a digital standpoint.

Julia Raymond:
Yeah, and I love that you brought up just the human element, because that sometimes starts to fade away when you’re getting into the depths of the digital discussion. And actually, I saw a Salesforce report not too long ago that said over half of millennials do not think store associates have the right tools to provide them with good customer service. And I think that kind of attests to what you’re saying, which is that you know, there needs to be a focus on humans as well, equipping people in store to provide that next level of connection.

Miya Knights:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was 10, 12 years ago now I had IT Directors saying to me that their customers were literally coming into their stores armed with more information to out negotiate the sales person than the sales person had themselves. And if that was 10-12 years ago, you know, in the intervening period of time, the break neck speed of technology development, the development of clienteling software, for example. There are a myriad number of solutions to that challenge and issue. I just think retailers really have to show the means and the will to be able to want to tackle them.

Julia Raymond:
Definitely. Thank you for being a guest on the show, and also, where can our listeners go if they wanted to purchase one of your recent books?

Miya Knights:
Oh, thank you, yes. It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. And for follow up, of course both books are available on Amazon, but they are both published by Kogan Page, so you can find both books for sale direct from the publisher at www.KoganPage.com, and it’s Kogan with a K.

Julia Raymond:
Perfect. Thank you, Miya, thanks for being on the show today.

Miya Knights:
Thank you, thanks so much for having me.

Julia Raymond:
All right, bye.