Achieving sustainable e-commerce
By Jackie Sebesta The emerging core market of e-commerce is coming to the forefront at Lowe-Martin. We are now faced with the challenge and the often-competing priority of delivering products faster and in perfect condition, while still maintaining our commitment to protect the environment: including reducing our carbon footprint. When …
Dawn of the Corporate SuperCitizen
By Mike Robitaille Yesterday’s business playbook remains seductively simple: make a product, sell it, collect money for it, and spend as little as possible in the process. The game was straightforward: companies held all the cards and the general public was happily oblivious and, for the most part, powerless. Life …
Elections: think like a machine
By Christopher Alexander The Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) success in the 2018 elections was a major blow to three major Canadian pollsters, which had predicted a much closer race between the CAQ and the Liberals. Failed prognosticating is certainly nothing new. But polling difficulties in both Canada and the United …
Going the last mile (km) for customers
By Cami Zimmer According to a 2018 Retail TouchPoints study, last-mile (or kilometre) services have risen by 50% in the last 18 months, with most of the increased demand coming from the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce segment1. This has numerous implications for both customers and brands and is changing the way …
Managing the brand in disasters: Marc Gordon Interview
By Brendan Read When companies are faced with disasters the question becomes how best to respond in order to ensure a customer-accepting customer experience (CX), customer retention, loyalty and brand reputation. This perennial issue came recently, dramatically and tragically back into spotlight with the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX …
Preventing Data Breaches
By Karl Swannie As a marketing professional, are you fully prepared for a data security breach? When it is determined that confidential customer data has been stolen, and there will likely be a hefty price tag attempting to fix what went wrong, will you know how to react? Finally, when …
The big small business market
By Miki Velemirovich In Canada, small business is huge, accounting for 97.9% of all businesses across the country. Out of an estimated 1.18 million enterprises, 1.15 million are those with fewer than 100 employees1. A community this size deserves attention. But in order to reach it effectively, marketers need to …
The Key to Fulfillment
By Greg Brown E-commerce continues to transform global retailing, and in Canada it is picking up steam. Online retail sales grew 30.6% (C$15.65 billion) in 2017: twice that of U.S. merchants1. International sales are likely an important key to this momentum. Canada’s geography also makes e-commerce a natural as much …
The relatable brand comes of age
By Stephen Shaw The rapid growth of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands may seem like a replay of the dot-com bubble in the Web 1.0 era. But what makes this new generation of DTC brands different is a genuine love for their customers. They have infiltrated just about every consumer category—clothing and …
Trust that makes the difference
By Saul Klein Traditionally, focusing on an organization’s higher purpose has been the purview of social enterprises and not-for-profit organizations, or seen as an element of corporate social responsibility with limited impact on business practices. More recently, however, we have seen a paradigm shift in the way customers and employees …