Argos is undoubtly one of the largest online retailers operating in the UK. With a staggering 43,000+ products offered online at http://www.argos.co.uk and instore it is fair to say they are rather ambitious with the service they intend to offer. Therefore, it is vital that they rise to the challenge and stay at the top of the digital marketing game in order to satisfy their some 123 million customers.

At Argos, with over 40 years’ experience it is clear that they understand they have certain valuable expectations when using their services. As part of their progression in the ever changing technological world and increasing demand they have put in place 53 new digital stores in addition to their 758 pre-existing stores.

Argos Digital Stores

The vision of these new digital stores are to enhance and improve the customers in-store experience. Argos fully understand that this is a considerable risk and therefore they are required to closely monitor customer’s feedback and reactions to the new changes. To ensure this monitoring was done successfully Argos used Brandwatch to gage how well these new stores were doing.

The online platform Brandwatch monitor social media with the interest of the presence of Brands on social media. They then produce in-depth analysis and reports in order to brief brands on their performance, allowing them to understand what areas they are performing well in and where there is room for improvement. The Brandwatch case study on Argos gave them the perfect opportunity to closely monitor the reactions to their new digital stores and gain vital feedback. Such a case study was particularly useful in this case as for customers using the service would highly likely have some understanding of technology and therefore be more like to use social media as a means for expressing their opinions.

Brandwatch has the use of various tools in order to allow them to gain the feedback and then analyse it to the best of its utility. They have the ability to distinguish feedback in terms of gender, locations, age etc. This gives them the benefit of being able to provide more specific and useful analysis of the feedback. This provides them with positive, neutral and negative feedback, from this feedback Brands like Argos are able to measure how successful potential improvements such as digital stores are.

Brands such as Argos at some point will always have to take risks such as the digital stores in order to progress and improve, as well as keeping up with competitors. In comparison to other stores operating within the UK that have also taken risks in order to involve their services using new technology, stores such as Wickes are now offering an online service called ‘click and collect’ which allows customers to order products online which are ready to collect in store in one hour. This adds a new dimension to drawing in customers as this allows them to browse online, check stock and then ultimately gets customers into the store to collect their products where they then have the opportunity to look around the store and make further purchases.

Wickes Click and Collect

With advancements like this it is more important than ever that brands which wish to compete in such a competitive market are able to keep up with other stores and keep profit up. The ultimate question is in a world of every changing and improving technology how far will companies go to provide service? Soon could there be robots delivering products to our doors with the hour?…The possibilities for the future really are endless and exciting!