Technology plays its usual role as a catalyst for change, both aggravating the problem, and proposing a solution.

Sales promotions rely in part on your shoppers having imperfect information. If your shoppers knew that discounts on one brand are balanced out by higher margins on other products, then they could theoretically buy at discount and avoid exceptional costs elsewhere. Similarly, if all your customers knew exactly which brands were best value, and in which retailers, they could shop around and seriously damage your profits. But of course, they don’t – partly because they don’t have all the right information, and partly because they don’t want to go to the effort.

However, Internet technology gives shoppers serious power. Access to faster and more accurate information allows shoppers to locate the best deals better than ever before (whether through search or social networks). Also, online shopping can make it very easy for the consumer to be ‘retailer promiscuous’, locating and sourcing products from the cheapest reliable vendor. The Internet in the hands of an experienced online shopper can seem like a perpetual sales promotion!

But this technological leveling of the playing field is also the start of a great new opportunity for promotional marketing.

Online retail offers a very different user experience to bricks-and-mortar retail. The time spent from the start of a FMCG shopping experience to the point of purchase is considerably faster online, from cutting out time spent travelling and trawling the aisles, to retailers saving your shopping lists for future purchases. Similarly, it is a completely different experience for clothes shopping online compared to in-store. No matter how many outfits you sample on virtual dolls online, from start to finish, it is a drastically faster process than hitting the high streets. How can we leverage this and offer tailored promotional campaigns?