Nordstrom Essay

The Competitive Online Retail Environment
Consumer purchasing decisions and behavior is continuing to change, not just in the U.S. but worldwide, shifting more away from the department store and onto the web. In such a changing environment, customer relationship management (CRM) becomes more important than ever, especially to a company such as Nordstrom who is the gold standard of customer service, the measuring stick by which other companies measure themselves (Spector & McCarthy, n.d.). The key for Nordstrom will be to adapt their traditional core strength, intimate and personalized customer service, to this new environment.
“The retail landscape has shifted toward e-commerce, but there are opportunities for department stores to capitalize

retail sales in the same year. Even more striking, is that E-commerce sales represented roughly 49.4% of all retail sales growth (Zaroban, Enright, & Demery, 2018). This strong growth in E-commerce sales is putting pressure on successful traditional brick and more retailers, such as Nordstrom, to keep pace in order to retain market share.
Product Categories
According to an online consumer report published by KPMG, men’s and women’s apparel, cosmetics, and accessories are among the top ten online consumer purchases with steady growth projected in each category (The Truth About Online Consumers, 2017).
Generational Trends, Lifestyle, Affluence
Despite the assumption that the tech savvy Millenials are driving the upswing in online shopping, Generation X consumers actually lead the way, making 20% more online purchases then their younger counterparts (The Truth About Online Consumers, 2017). Millenials are, however, still leading the way in use of digital communication technologies, mainly social media, albeit by a small margin. According to data from Pew Research Center, as of 2018, 85% of Millenials and 75% of Genration Xers use some form of social media (Jiang,

This unique offering allows the consumer access to expert advice on fashion, beauty, weddings, and more through electronic correspondence. The Company even offers a personal shopping assistant via video conferencing providing assistance and personal guidance through the sales process (Spector & McCarthy, n.d.). It is an ultimate shopping convenience not offered, or able to be offered, by online only retailers.
Shoppers nationwide can easily use Reserve Online & Try In Store through the Nordstrom mobile app by selecting "Reserve Online & Try In Store" from the product detail page of the items they'd like to try on. Customers will then receive a text notification when their items have been found at their nearest store and are ready to try on, as well as a text notification when they get to the store letting them know where they can find the dedicated dressing room with their name and selected items (Nordstrom,