Please provide an articulate reply and feedback to this students Discussion board post:

My name is Kiri Sassone and I am from Marietta, GA. I have two Associate degrees; a BA in General Studies; and am about to complete my MBA with a concentration in Business Intelligence. I currently work as a Consumer Service Specialist for Lindt & Sprüngli and my intrapreneurial idea for my capstone has been crafted around increasing our customer base thru a high frequency consumable product. Coffee is a consumable product and a daily demand for many. By meeting the coffee demand with a coffee and premium chocolate offering was an idea I was burdened with as I watched retail, or a global scale, take a seat to eCommerce. How can we bring foot traffic back into the store retail environment? While I can see the instant gratification that e-commerce provides, I can also see the eventual loss of the people contact. In order to look past the pendulum swing of more e-commerce and less store retail, I wanted to look ahead to anticipate where the consumer may be after the romance of e-commerce dies down. Hence, the idea of Coffee as You Go, a drive-thru add-onto specific established Lindt Chocolate Stores.

My new concept evolved because of needing to see a change in how we do business. Traditional brick and mortar establishments have become less of a customer mode of choice simply because of the convenience of buying online. However, the value of making a hands-on purchase decision with a conversation with a store associate cannot be matched in the online environment. Retail must, however, address how to keep their businesses alive in this technological age of the consumer. “Digital marketing, analytics, omni-channel retail, artificial intelligence, sensory data, and cloud services” need to be considered when navigating this new technological age, according to Macy Bayern, a reporter for ZDNet (Bayern, 2018). Bayern highlights the culture shift that has “led some 9,000 stores to close down in 2017” (Bayern, 2018, para 1) and comments that the projection for 2018 could be closer to 12,000.

Lindt & Sprüngli has an ambitious goal “to be the world’s leading retailer of premium chocolate by 2020” (LINDT & SPRÜNGLI MAÎTRE CHOCOLATIER SUISSE DEPUIS 1845, 2015). In order to do that, Lindt & Sprüngli needs to navigate this narrow path to success by taking into account the changing nature of the customers buying behavior and be full prepared in advance of the changes happening to all retail and wholesale businesses. I hope my concept will open up opportunities to venture into strategic changes that need to take place in order for Lindt & Sprüngli to meet its ambitious goal.

References

Bayern, M. (2018, July 3). 10 technologies leading digital transformation in retail. Retrieved from https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-technologies-lead…

LINDT & SPRÜNGLI MAÎTRE CHOCOLATIER SUISSE DEPUIS 1845. (2015). LINDT & SPRÜNGLI Annual Report. Retrieved from LINDT & SPRÜNGLI .