Article by Philippe BERTRAND, Les Echos
According to the OC&C firm, brands that combine a website and stores are on average more popular than others.
The more online a brand is present, the greater its overall appeal. This is the main finding of the 2014 edition of the OC & C Strategy Consultants survey on the attractiveness of retail brands.
At first glance, the 2014 ranking highlights the return to favor of Picard, whose image was tarnished last year by the horsemeat lasagna scandal. The frozen food specialist regains its status as the favorite brand of the French, ahead of Amazon and Yves Rocher. Other lessons include the strong growth of the Spartoo.com website (+4.3 points) – which, however, did not reach the Top 30 –, of Darty (+3.3 points), which thus sees the revaluation of its services implemented by its new CEO, Régis Schultz, rewarded (while FNAC fell by 1 point), and of Ikea, which returned to its usual level after the social scandals that rocked it.
For Jean-Daniel Pick, partner at OC & C, two trends also emerged from this survey conducted last June and July among 6,000 consumers: "We observed two things that have an impact on the overall rating given to brands: the share of own brands and multichannel." His colleague Guy-Noël Chatelin specifies that, among the 11 criteria rated by the respondents, choice, trust and quality come first, with low prices only being in ninth position ("It has become a prerequisite," specifies the consultant).
Apparent paradox
But overall, networks that sell their own branded products (such as Picard or Ikea) are rated higher than others. Furthermore, those that develop a multi-channel strategy obtain a better average score (76.8) than brands that only operate stores (70.1) and even more so pure e-tailers (65.6). On all criteria, those that combine points of sale and websites are ahead of the others.
From this perspective, the fact that respondents are making a harsh assessment of the quality of retailers' online stores (the average score for this specific criterion has dropped by 5 points in one year) is merely an apparent paradox. Indeed, this only reflects the increasing level of consumer demand for site usability and design. From this perspective, even the score of "pure players" like Amazon is declining. This is a sign that e-merchandising is still in its infancy. One of the criticisms, OC&C consultants point out, is that retailers often only present a portion of their offerings online.