With the growth of new sales channels such as online and mobile, retailers have started asking themselves the question: What is the best way to create a consistent shopping experience no matter where the customer is coming from?
While there are obviously a number of possible answers, one popular umbrella term for the best practices that have emerged in recent years is “unified commerce.”
The term first started showing up in Google searches back in 2008, but as recently as the National Retail Federation’s Big Show earlier this year, it remained a talking point.
As one B2B e-commerce company noted in a roundup of post-conference takeaways, “there is no longer a difference between in-store and online shopping for customers. They now expect brands to offer the same level of support, inventory, product diversity, and overall experience no matter where they decide to make a purchase.”
That is just one way of summing up the concept, but as an avalanche of blog posts and industry reports can attest, a number of key ideas and tactics are gathered under the label. Here’s a breakdown of some of them:
The importance of integration
In some respects, unified commerce might sound a lot like another well-known industry term: omnichannel. And indeed, the two concepts are related. Both are concerned with managing the customer experience across multiple channels.
The difference, according to the software company Salsify, is that unified commerce is the integration of front-end and back-end operations into a single seamless platform, including inventory distribution, order management, merchandise planning, and the collection of consumer data.
Apimio, another retail software provider, similarly defines united commerce as combining centralized data management, inventory management, and unified payment solutions.
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To put it another way, unified commerce is not just about selling across channels. It’s about using the same platform with the same technological capabilities across platforms, such that a customer could, for example, maintain the same shopping cart when they’re shopping across e-commerce sites and social media platforms.
What does this look like in practice? One recent example comes from Pinterest, which partnered with a firm called VTEX to make it easier for companies to feature their product catalog directly on the social media platform, and then easily track conversions.
“This will cultivate many meaningful engagements that reinvigorate organic growth and foster a vibrant community as we continue to create the best unified commerce experience,” Santiago Naranjo Alvaréz, CRO at VTEX, said in a statement.
Unified commerce vs. adaptive retail
This kind of practice has another name, however. It’s “social commerce,” and it’s not the only contender vying for the status of the industry’s favorite slogan/buzzword.
While social commerce refers more specifically to the practice of selling directly through social media channels, what some major retailers such as Walmart are calling “adaptive retail” offers a holistic approach that has more affinities with unified commerce.
Walmart unveiled its commitment to adaptive retail in January, saying “it’s about creating personalized, seamless, and flexible shopping experiences from start to finish.”
How does this differ from unified commerce? One expert source told Retail Brew back in February that unified commerce is more of an end goal, while adaptive retail describes an ongoing process. Others in the industry said there wasn’t much of a difference.