My classmate, Jacqueline Yan, wrote a blog about the decreasing rate of customer flow in retail stores as a result of the new online shopping trend. In the post, she mentions the need for a change in retail store’s business model in order to attract customers.

From my perspective, I completely agree with Jacqueline; however, I would like to apply the fresh knowledge we just learned from our COMM 101 class about the dysfunctional reward system for businesses and the unwanted pressure it causes for the company’s management.

Photo Courtesy To: http://zarrtech.net/the-ins-and-outs-of-the-online-shopping-experience/

It is interesting to observe that at this time, store management has the pressure to fight the online opponent by being creative AND find methods to be low cost at the same time. I see these two concepts as contradictory because in order to be creative, it is evident that the company will have to increase their costs. Yet, the CFO wouldn’t be too happy if their “innovation” didn’t bare any fruit.

I personally think that setting expectations on stores to increase the customer flow is very unrealistic because it must be a decision that the entire company makes as a whole to add or remove a certain aspect of the retail stores (e.g. live entertainment). I actually would suggest that companies change their perspective and take the pressure of their management in order to gain more success.