Comment: Forget omnichannel, isn’t it all just retail?

Omnichannel, multichannel or just plain retail. Does the term by which the industry refers to the proliferation of ways it can interact and transact with its customers matter? From Freakonomics to Big Data, business has a long track record of inventing words to describe concepts - some more successful than others. And in most cases, it is the robustness of the concept that matters, not the name itself.

Retailers that have leveraged the term omnichannel well, such as Aurora, have used it to help deliver far-reaching change to the way they view the multiple channels in which they operate - helping them integrate digital into their traditional retailing, deliver a consistent experience to customers and a single view of their data.

But the expression still divides opinion. Opponents insist the phrase is superfluous, its constituent parts adding up to no more than great retailing. At this week’s Retail Week Ecommerce Summit, House of Fraser multichannel boss Andy Harding went so far as to argue that the term was damaging the industry and holding back the careers of ecommerce professionals by creating confusion at board level about etail’s future.

His argument was not that consistency at a brand level doesn’t matter, but that the word omnichannel exaggerates similarities between channels and clouds the understanding that each is unique in its ability to deliver value to the customer and should be developed with the specific capabilities of the devices in question and the environment in which they are used. In short, is the term omnichannel in danger of doing the opposite of what it was intended to do, by removing a layer of understanding of the customer and how they want to shop across channels, while adding unnecessary debate about how the digital future of retail should evolve? Let us know your thoughts.