Product Offerings Analysis -- REI Term Paper

REI's commitment to being the trusted advisor in the sports areas they concentrate on is a proven strategy in its industry as North Face has successfully implemented this same approach to gain consumers' and sports enthusiasts' trust (Kusterbeck, 2008). Of the two companies, REI has been more successful therefore in transforming their expertise into a competitive advantage, and supporting an effective multichannel selling strategy too.

Assessing the Impact of an Expert-Driven Multichannel Strategy

Where Sports Authority has centered its marketing overall and website specifically on product features and a product line grouping by demographics, REI has centered their multichannel strategy on becoming the trusted advisor in snowboarding. The difference is that REI drives its product mix based on knowledge of the buyer and creates channels to inform and sell at the same time. The kiosks in their stores have access to all 78,000 items in their catalog, creating a virtual trusted advisor anytime anyone in the store needs assistance (Sullivan, 2004).Conclusion

REI averages 80% of sales to members and a 50/50 split of sales to members and nonmembers online. In addition REI has created a more effective multichannel management strategy that can quickly scale then dominate sports areas of interest, as the investments in enterprise content management systems give them greater flexibility (Sullivan, 2004). Finally REI has created more trust with customers as a result of how they created their online and offline channel strategies to all revolve around expertise.

References

Kusterbeck, S.. (2008, November). Knowledge is Power for the North Face. Apparel, 50(3), 22.

Jordan K. Speer. (2006, April). REI Continues its Transformation with PLM.….....