Google Rules for Retail

Posted by David Dorf on Oracle Blogs See other posts from Oracle Blogs or by David Dorf
Published on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:48:46 -0600 Indexed on 2010/04/26 14:44 UTC
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1-800-Flowers

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Barnes & Noble

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Best Buy

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facebook

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H&M

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Jeff Jarvis

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Kohl's

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Lowes

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Newegg

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Sears

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Starbucks

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target

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Tesco

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Threadless

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twitter

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Wet Seal

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Whole Foods

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Zappos

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Zara

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lululemon

In the book What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis outlines ten "Google Rules" that define how Google acts. These rules help define how Web 2.0 businesses operate today and into the future. While there's a chapter in the book on applying these rules to the retail industry, it wasn't very in-depth. So I've decided to more directly apply the rules to retail, along with some notable examples of success. The table below shows Jeff's Google Rule, some Industry Examples, and New Retailer Rules that I created.

Google Rule	Industry Examples	New Retailer Rule
New Relationship Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner	Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers.	Listen to what your customers are saying about you. Convert the critics to fans and the fans to *influencers*.
New Architecture Join a network; be a platform	Tesco and BestBuy released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new applications.	Become a *destination for information*.
New Publicness Life is public, so is business	Zappos and WholeFoods founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and connecting to customers. It's not always pretty, but it's genuine.	Be *transparent*. Share both your successes and failures with your customers.
New Society Elegant organization	Wet Seal helps their customers assemble outfits and show them off to each other. Barnes & Noble has a community site that includes a bookclub.	Communities of your customers already exist, so *help them organize* better.
New Economy Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches	lululemon found a niche for yoga inspired athletic wear. Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs of T-shirts.	Serve small markets with *niche products*.
New Business Reality Decide what business you're in	When Lowes realized catering to women brought the men along, their sales increased.	Customers want *experiences* to go with the products they buy.
New Attitude Trust the people and listen	In 2008 Starbucks launched MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers.	Use social networks as additional data points for making *better merchandising decisions*.
New Ethic Be honest and transparent; don't be evil	Target is giving away reusable shopping bags for Earth Day. Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays.	Being green earns *customers' respect* and lowers costs too.
New Speed Life is live	H&M and Zara keep up with fashion trends.	Be *prepared to pounce* on you customers' fickle interests.
New Imperatives Encourage, enable and protect innovation	1-800-Flowers was the first do sales in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce. The Sears Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo.	Give your staff *permission to fail* so innovation won't be stifled.

Jeff will be a keynote speaker at Crosstalk, our upcoming annual user conference, so I'm looking forward to hearing more of his perspective on retail and the new economy.

Developer IT