FAMILY BUSINESS SPECIAL...................... Family companies, too, can go astray

 Family companies, too, 

 can go astray

David Kohler is President and COO of Kohler, a Wisconsin-headquartered firm founded in 1873 that manufactures a range of products from engines to power generation systems. The company though is best known for its range of luxury bath and kitchen products. The 48-year-old is a fourth generation member of the Kohler business family and a yoga enthusiast. In an exclusive interview to ET Corporate Dossier, David shares interesting insights about family-run businesses and his equation with his chief executive and father Herbert Kohler Jr. Edited excerpts:

What are the top three leadership lessons that you have learnt from your father?
Number one would be sticking to a set of values and business principles. The second lesson is attention to detail. Details are everything — in a plan, a product and execution. Third lesson is a passion and love for the creative process. We love the creative process more than anything else we do, whether it's creating a strategy or driving innovation in a new product or pioneering in a market like India.And how often do you disagree or argue with your dad over business strategy?

It's funny but honestly we don't argue that much.How difficult is it is for sons to live up to their legendary father's reputation?

It's not difficult in that sense because I have always believed that there is incredible opportunity to continue to advance the company and our best days are still ahead. Even after 141 great years of amazing growth and success, we still have incredible opportunity going forward. So I haven't really thought of it in comparison to my father but have been driven internally to see the company succeed.But doesn't this comparison bug you?

No, it doesn't. I have great respect for my father and I have learnt an incredible amount from him. We are very similar but also very different. And that's okay. I have children too and I want my kids to cut their own path and to find something that they are passionate about and grow and achieve.Are you grooming your kids to become a part of the business?

It's really going to be up to them, because for any family member to be able to come into this business and succeed they have to have three things. Number one, they have to be passionate about this business. That you can't force, it has to come naturally. Second, they have to have a work ethic and work hard. Third, if they are going to rise to the senior levels of what is now a very big company, they have to be very competent. Because, we can't afford to have people on senior positions that aren't really great.What is the biggest strength of a family-led business?

The greatest thing is the ability to chart your own destiny without having to worry about the street. You can really take a strategy, take a long term view to build value or to drive your organisation forward. But like any company, family companies can go astray. 

What are the top three mistakes that you've made?
I have made a lot of mistakes. That's how you grow and learn. We all make 'people mistakes'. Sometimes, you hire somebody and promote somebody for a position, and they don't work out for some reason. Second mistake is not analysing critical decisions well enough. Third would be not speaking up aggressively enough, when something is not right. All leaders should have the backbone to say a firm "no" and change direction when things are not working.
India is a land of contradiction with a large percentage of population not having access to toilets. How does that make you feel when you talk about highend luxury products for the super rich?
The mission of our company is to enhance the level of 'gracious living' for everybody touched by our products and services. We want to think about the mission more broadly. Our teams are actually working with schools to improve the quality of bathrooms and sanitation. We are also working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on their global toilet initiative. We are working with Caltech University and a team of scientists who have developed a solar power close loop toilet system that disinfects the water, for places that don't have access to safe sanitation. We have one such system installed in Kerala. We have just received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and are now working on the second phase with Caltech to develop six of these units in India. We have another project on safe drinking water which can cut down on water borne diseases which is the significant cause of infant deaths.How has your India business performed over the last few years?

It's been excellent. We have continued a very strong double-digit growth rate here. We have every intent over the next five years to continue that.But China market is bigger than India ...

The China market is bigger absolutely and Kohler is number one in China and that's our second biggest market in the world after United States. But our percentage growth rate in India has been greater than that in China in the past five years.What's your investment target in India?

We don't have any specific investment target, but we are going to continue to expand. We already have over $100 million invested in India. We are going to continue to expand our facilities in Gujarat. We acquired a building in Pune last year for a technology and engineering center. We also have a diesel engine and generator facility in Aurangabad which we will continue to expand.

By Rajiv Singh, ET CD 19 Dec, 2014

APP SPECIAL................... FREE APP : 5 TIME-SAVING GEMS FOR YOUR SMARTPHONE

 FREE APP : 5 TIME-SAVING 

 GEMS FOR 

YOUR SMARTPHONE

SPEND A LITTLE TIME TO SET UP AND USE THESE APPS; SAVE A LOT OF TIME IN THE LONG RUN.

No matter how well you manage your time, there never seems to be enough of it. And time is like money: sometimes you've got to spend it to make it. Here are a handful of apps that are worth the time spent to set them up. We'll leave money out of the equation, though: These are all free.

1. IF YOU WANT TO SPEND LESS TIME IN THE CAR

Waze (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Web) is a must-download. The social GPS navigation app slurps up real-time data as you're commuting and combines it with data from other Waze users around you. You'll catch wind of upcoming speed traps, get notified of accidents and—Waze's killer feature—you'll be automatically rerouted to your destination along the quickest path. There's community-sourced gas pricing, too, so you can fill up on the cheap.

2. IF YOU'RE BURIED IN PAPERWORK

Take TinyScan (Android, iOS) for a spin. It turns your smartphone into a pocket-sized scanner, automatically detecting the edges of a document you'd like to digitize. It'll then capture it—easy as snapping a photo—and save it as a PDF file on your phone, at which point you can email it to yourself (or others), or save it to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, or Box. The app is free but is limited to two scans kept on your phone. Delete a document after you've emailed it or sent it to an online drive, though, and you can scan another.

BONUS APP!

Let's do a 180 and go for a total time-suck. That'd be Imgur. Home to viral pictures of the funny, cat, d'awww and animated GIF varieties, Imgur has been app-ified in countless ways across numerous operating systems, so find one you like and fire it up. You'll be stuck swiping for hours.

3. IF YOU FIND NEWS TOO NOISY

Grab Circa (Android, iOS). It shrinks the day's most important stories down into phone-optimized chunks and presents things in a straightforward, context-rich tone. Bigger stories that take longer to play out are corralled update by update and organized intuitively, which makes it easy to get a bird's-eye view of a particular event if you jump in mid-stream. You can set the app up to alert you to breaking news items, and choose the topics you care most about to show up when you open the app. Take an easy five minutes or so each day, and you're all caught up.

4. IF KEEPING EVERYONE IN YOUR LIFE ON THE SAME PAGE IS A FULL-TIME JOB

Make sure your entire tribe is using Cabin (Android, iOS). You can set up a private social network for, say, your family. You can live-chat one on one or with the entire group, and quickly hone in on everyone's location so you don't have to keep calling and texting for updates all day. And speaking of location, you can set up location-based to-do lists. Whoever's nearest to the dry cleaner next will get a pop-up reminder when they get close to the store, for instance. Once the dry cleaning has been picked up, the task can be marked as completed for all to see. "All" being only those invited to your private network, of course.

5. IF YOU CAN'T KEEP ALL THOSE PASSWORDS STRAIGHT

Or if you use the same password for everything (don't do it!), check out Dashlane (Android, iOS, Web). It's a password manager for mobile devices and desktops that keeps track of all your logins, automatically entering your credentials as you surf. The app will automatically generate new, super-strong passwords for you and can lock itself down if you lose your phone. Best of all, you'll get notified of security breaches that get reported at sites where you have accounts, and an upcoming feature will allow you to automatically change all of your passwords at once with a few taps.

BY DOUG AAMOTHhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3040127/app-economy/free-app-friday-5-time-saving-apps#4?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=featured&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=12192014

MARKETING SPECIAL................... Neuroscience Marketing: Is the Product Worth the Price?

Neuroscience Marketing:

 Is the Product 

Worth the Price?

Are consumers more likely to buy if they see the price before the product, or vice versa? Uma Karmarkar and colleagues scan the brains of shoppers to find out.

Think of the last time you went shopping.

By the time you decided to buy a product, you knew both what you were buying and how much it cost. But was your decision affected by whether you saw the price or the product first? That's the question at the heart of new experimental research that uses neuroscience tools to shed light on how our brains make purchasing decisions.

"We were interested in whether considering the price first changed how people thought about the decision process, and whether it changed the way the brain coded the value of a product," says Uma R. Karmarkar, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School, who conducted the research with Baba Shiv, a marketing professor and neuroeconomics expert at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Brian Knutson, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford. "Because we had neuroscience tools at our disposal, we had the benefit of exploring both those questions," Karmarkar says.

The researchers found that price primacy (viewing the price first) makes consumers more likely to focus on whether a product is worth its price, and consequently can help induce the purchase of specific kinds of bargain-priced items. Their study, Cost Conscious? The Neural and Behavioral Impact of Price Primacy on Decision-Making, will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.

The research could help retailers and marketers decide when it's best to lead with price, which products work best with that strategy, and how to frame sales messages to consumers.

THE BRAIN SHOPPING EXPERIMENT

In a series of experiments, participants went shopping—while lying on their backs inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The fMRI uses a giant electro-magnet, often 3 teslas strong, to track the blood flow throughout the brain as test subjects respond to sensory cues. In this case, participants were responding to pictures of products and their prices.

In the first experiment, conducted at an imaging center on the Stanford University campus, each participant was given $40 of shopping money before viewing a series of 80 products and their prices on a screen inside the fMRI machine. "This made the shopping experience more real," Karmarkar says.

To encourage purchasing, the products were offered at sub-retail prices. Sometimes participants saw the price first, and sometimes they saw the product first. But in every case, they eventually saw an image of both the product and the price presented together. At that point, they chose whether to purchase the product, indicating yes or no with the push of a button. After exiting the machine, participants filled out a survey to rate how much they had liked each product, on a scale of 1 to 7.

The researchers focused on brain activity at the moment participants saw the product and price presented together. They were most interested in the medial prefrontal cortex (the area in the brain that deals with estimating decision value) and the nucleus accumbens (an area that's been called the pleasure center, and whose activity is correlated with whether a product is viscerally desirable). "What we cared about was whether the neural patterns in these areas looked different at the point when the information on the screen was eventually the same," Karmarkar says.

The results showed that the brain activity varied according to whether the participant had seen the price or product first. "The pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex suggested to us that sequence matters: At the very simplest, the neural signals looked different when the price came first versus when the product came first," Karmarkar says. "When the product came first, the decision question seemed to be one of 'Do I like it?' and when the price came first, the question seemed to be 'Is it worth it?' "

That said, price primacy didn't have much of an effect on actual purchasing behavior. Participants bought about the same number of items and reported similar "liking" ratings regardless of whether they had seen a product or price first. The researchers suspected that even if participants were more critical of a product's value in the price primacy condition, the products were equally attractive under both conditions.

Most of the participants were in their 20s, and most of the products in appealed to their demographic—movies, clothing, noise-canceling headphones, and so on. "If you really love something, and you can afford it, you're going to buy it," Karmarkar says. "For those kinds of 'easy' decisions, it doesn't matter much whether the product or the price comes first."

And while the results of this initial experiment had been significant to neuroscience, Karmarkar's team also wanted to show that their research could have real-world implications for retailers—a direct effect on whether a consumer decided to buy a product. They hypothesized that price primacy might actually increase the likelihood of buying products, but only if the decision was related more to the product's usefulness than to pure emotional desire.

WATER FILTRATION PITCHERS AND BATTERIES

To that end, the researchers designed a follow-up study in which 83 participants sat at their computers, evaluating arguably boring but utilitarian products: a water filtration pitcher, a pack of AA batteries, a USB drive, and a flashlight. Similar to the fMRI study, the products were offered at a discount.

For all four products, participants viewed only a price or only a picture of the product for eight seconds, followed by a decision screen displaying both price and product. They then indicated the extent to which they wanted to buy the items on a scale from 0 to 100, with anything above a 50 categorized as intent to purchase the product.

This time, price primacy had a direct effect on purchasing decision. Participants were significantly more likely to purchase a product if they saw the price first than if they saw the product first. For retailers this indicates that it makes sense to lead with the price, at least when advertising utilitarian items. At the same time, in cases where they advertise prices first, retailers may want to go out of their way to highlight a product's functionality over its form.

"The question isn't whether the price makes a product seem better, it's whether a product is worth its price," Karmarkar says. "Putting the price first just tightens the link between the benefit you get from the price and the benefit you get from the product itself."

But the research also revealed a notable caveat: After participants indicated whether they wanted to buy a product, they reported exactly how much they'd personally be willing to pay for the item, typing a dollar amount into an online form. Surprisingly, the average willingness-to-pay amount was slightly lower in cases where they had viewed the price first. This indicates that if retailers want to take advantage of price primacy, they need to advertise true bargains. So, for insance, a gigantic neon sign advertising $5 off a $20,000 car? That's going to turn customers away.

"If it's an insignificant discount, then you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage by highlighting the price first, because people are now cognitively scrutinizing the price and making sure it's worth it," Karmarkar says. "You can't just try to fool people into thinking it's a great price."

by Carmen Nobel

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7651.html

RETAIL SPECIAL......................... Making stores matter in a multichannel world

 Making stores matter in a 

  multichannel world

As the role of the brick-and-mortar store evolves, retailers will continually have to refine how they use their real estate.

For decades, the retail industry has followed the same straightforward formula for growth: open new stores. By replicating a proven store format in a new catchment area, retailers could reliably enlarge their customer base and count on healthy increases in sales.

But the world has changed. More than half of consumers now research their retail purchases online, making purely in-store purchase decisions the shrinking minority. In many categories, e-commerce has dramatically lessened the need for physical stores. “Virtual space”—which we define as the floor space that would be required to generate the sales volume that online retail now accounts for, at a sales density equivalent to the industry average—is expanding at a staggering rate. In this new world, what is the role of the brick-and-mortar store?

Many retailers find themselves struggling with the question and saddled with more real estate than they know what to do with. After all, their property departments are geared up for expansion and acquisition. Their finance departments have traditionally focused on reaping investment returns from stores and tend to be jittery about investing in new and unproven technologies. On the flip side, their e-commerce directors are frustrated by this lack of understanding of the pace and mind-set such companies need to become digital winners.

To position themselves for success in a multichannel world, retailers would do well to take a disciplined approach that begins with a reassessment of the role of the physical store. We recommend a five-step approach we call STORE: starting with a clear vision for the future role of the store, tailoring categories and formats accordingly, optimizing the store portfolio using forward-looking analytics, reinventing the in-store shopping experience, and executing systematically across channels.

The incredible shrinking footprint

The effects of online migration in the retail industry are evident in every category. In the United States, apparel retailer Gap closed more than 250 stores in 2013; department-store chain Sears closed almost 200. Walmart’s new stores are about a third smaller than they were five years ago.

In the United Kingdom, the number of vacant retail shops rose by 355 percent between 2008 and 2013,1 and in 2013 and 2014, three of the “big four” supermarkets took a combined write-down of £1.2 billion (approximately $2 billion) on the value of their undeveloped property. Perhaps the most affected category has been consumer electronics, where a 20 to 30 percent decline in physical retail space in the UK market between 2006 and 2012 was fully offset by the addition of an equivalent amount of virtual space.

Of course, online retail has affected more than just physical floor space. Amazon, for one, has put intense pressure on retailers’ top and bottom lines by having key items priced 13 to 20 percent lower than average, an assortment 17 times larger than the average retailer’s, and a cost base that is 3 to 4 percent lower than brick-and-mortar competitors’, all while achieving the highest customer-satisfaction scores in the industry. The combined effects of Amazon and other online retailers have rapidly hurt traditional retailers’ return on invested capital, as fewer sales flow through existing physical assets.

Many retailers’ instinctive response to these headwinds has been to close underperforming stores and to look for operational efficiencies, but these moves only buy time—they can’t fully close the performance gap (exhibit). “Shrinking to greatness” is not the answer.

A framework for change

Shifting from a store-focused approach to a multichannel mind-set requires retailers to change their traditional frames of reference and ways of working. As consumers increasingly shop across channels, terms like “convenience” and “efficiency” take on new meanings. Customer expectations are rising: for instance, customers now expect price consistency across channels, the ability to buy online and pick up or return in store, and a range of payment options. Price transparency puts pressure on retailers to develop ultraefficient operating models. The wealth of online information available to consumers raises the bar for in-store service and expertise.

But let’s be clear: the brick-and-mortar store is not dead; it just plays a different role now. In fact, in a multichannel world, physical stores can provide a competitive advantage. Some multichannel retailers have seen growth in their online sales and penetration among consumers who live near their stores. In several sectors, “click and collect” is proving a popular and increasingly efficient means of serving the customer. More than 50 percent of Walmart’s online sales and around 40 percent of Best Buy’s already are picked up in stores. Best Buy’s store-within-a-store partnerships with Microsoft, Samsung, and other suppliers capitalize on manufacturers’ need to show off their products in a physical retail environment. Former online pure plays such as Oak Furniture Land and sofa.com have opened physical stores that now generate as much as 60 percent of sales.

Some retailers are now reshaping their store networks in response. One approach is to lead with a handful of flagship stores—which essentially become a marketing and service channel for the online business—supported by numerous smaller outlets that offer convenience and a curated product offering. British retailer Argos, for one, is experimenting with a hub-and-spoke distribution system in London, with products being delivered from large stores to smaller-format “digitally enabled” stores—allowing all Argos stores in the area to guarantee same-day or next-day fulfillment on some 20,000 products.

In light of rapidly evolving technology and consumer behavior, we believe retailers that take a forward-looking view and heed the following five imperatives can position themselves for multichannel success.

Start by redefining the role of the store

The first question that retailers should ask themselves at the beginning of their store-network transformation journey is, “What role will my brick-and-mortar stores play in a multichannel world?” To answer the question, retailers must find out what their customers truly care about. They need to know which aspects of a store matter most to customers and what purpose a store serves for them:

• Convenience and proximity. Do they value the ease and speed of being able to visit a store and get what they need?
• Efficiency. Do they see the store as a place that helps them make better use of their time—for example, by enabling them to make faster decisions or by serving as a pickup location for something they ordered online?
• Inspiration. Are they looking to discover—and be surprised by—new ideas and products?
• Instant gratification. Do they look forward to store visits as a chance to make impulse purchases and get things they want immediately?
• Discovery of a solution, information, or service. Are they seeking knowledge and expertise above and beyond what they can find via an Internet search?
• Entertainment and social interaction. Do they see stores as places where they can be entertained and have fun with family and friends?
• Experiencing brands and products. Do they visit stores for a chance to touch, feel, and be won over by products and brands?

Economic considerations are important as well. For each of the purposes above, retailers should ask, “How can stores do this profitably?” There may be more than one answer and therefore more than one winning store format. In any case, the agreed-upon role (or roles) of the store should dictate every decision about the store operating model: location, assortment, staffing, supplier funding, employee training, and so on.

A supermarket chain, for example, had been investing in costly service-led formats in which store staff provided expert in-person advice to shoppers. Customer research revealed, however, that service was a priority to a subset of customers in only one-tenth of its stores. Given these findings, in the other 90 percent of the retailer’s stores, it shifted its emphasis away from service and toward efficiency (with fewer service counters and more automated features, such as self-checkout) and instant gratification (for example, by heavily promoting new impulse-buy bargains), which were higher priorities for customers in those stores. The retailer was thus able to reduce operating costs materially while better meeting customers’ needs.

Tailor categories and formats accordingly

Customer priorities and store economics should next become critical inputs into ongoing category reviews, to ensure that assortments and space allocations are continually optimized for a multichannel world.

For example, with niche products—the so-called long tail—becoming searchable and available to consumers online, retailers can capture tremendous savings by stocking such products only in central warehouses rather than in stores. That said, some slow-moving products should remain available in stores, including emergency items (for instance, home-improvement retailers should stock tools and spare parts for fixing a leaky sink) and products that are part of a bigger basket (because customers buying paint or wallpaper in the store to complete a home-decorating project will be frustrated if they have to buy a ladder separately online).

Through customer research, an electronics retailer found that the frequency and purpose of customer visits, as well as average driving times, varied significantly by category. Only half of customers were willing to drive more than ten minutes to buy kitchen appliances in person, compared with almost 100 percent of customers buying a TV. Indeed, half of customers said they would never buy a TV without first seeing it, testing it, or comparing it with other models in a store. These insights suggested that the retailer needed different assortments in its in-town and out-of-town stores, as well as different space and service levels for each category.

Format decisions should also be driven by customer needs and priorities. Some retailers are adapting their store formats to the tastes and preferences of certain customer segments. Macy’s, for example, has embarked on a major effort to court millennials: it has launched more than a dozen segment-specific brands and created “destination zones” for millennials in its stores.

Optimize the portfolio using forward-looking analytics

The next step is to reevaluate the store portfolio through a multichannel lens. Leading retailers regularly analyze correlations between sales performance and catchment data to identify promising locations for new stores and to figure out the winning formula for top-performing stores; they examine factors such as population density, income, competitor presence, and average tenure of the sales staff. This is a valuable exercise, but in a fast-changing business environment, it’s not enough. Retailers must look ahead: they must extrapolate the impact of macro and industry-wide trends on the store network’s economics and operating model. And they must understand the impact that channels have on one another. One retailer that already had 100 unprofitable stores in its network found that another 100 would be in the red within three years given competitor trends and the shift to e-commerce.

The most forward-thinking retailers use analytical tools and techniques to reshape their entire store networks. They use financial and geospatial modeling to highlight not only where stores should be opened but also which should be closed, resized, or reformatted. Using geospatial modeling, a grocery chain made the counterintuitive discovery that a critical mass of stores in certain regions was highly correlated with a boost in online sales. The company therefore took a renewed interest in a number of locations that it had previously rejected. Analysis also showed that the grocer’s target customer groups were growing rapidly in neighborhoods near those sites, suggesting further upside.

Geospatial analysis is useful for creating a “blank sheet” optimal mix of store formats by location type. In a populous city, for instance, the optimal mix for an apparel retailer might include one or more flagship stores with a long drive time, high-footfall destinations (such as stores in malls or on suburban main streets) with a medium drive time, and “in-fills” (such as seasonal shops or pop-up stores) to cater to small catchment populations. Through geospatial analysis, a big-box retailer discovered significant overlaps in its stores’ catchment areas; its flagship stores were attracting customers from far-flung neighborhoods in which it also had smaller stores. It thus realized that it could reduce both the number and size of its smaller stores while still serving the same population.

Retailers can choose which specific stores to keep or close by forecasting future performance, lease profiles, and expected customer retention. For problematic stores with longer leases, retailers may need to make creative moves—such as subletting part or all of these stores or closing more profitable nearby stores with shorter leases and switching customers over to the remaining stores.

Reinvent the in-store shopping experience

Creating the store of the future will mean overhauling the in-store customer journey, in part by using new technology to make the shopping experience as seamless and easy as possible. Some retailers simply copy the in-store moves of multichannel champions such as Apple and Burberry or equip sales staff with iPads to give their stores an updated, high-tech look. But cosmetic changes alone won’t result in lasting impact. A multichannel mind-set must be embedded in the store design and in employees’ new ways of working.

Retailers could, for instance, give store staff easy access to detailed and up-to-date product information so that they can provide knowledgeable customer service without needing to memorize too many specifics. Mobile devices that tell store employees where exactly in the store an item is located and how many units are in stock could enable them to better assist customers. Handheld payment points would allow customers to avoid long checkout lines. In Nike stores’ online “studios” or kiosks, shoppers can not only place orders but also customize products.

Retailers should prioritize the basics: again, focusing on what matters most to their customers and enabling multichannel shopping (for instance, by establishing fast-pickup counters for online orders) while being ruthless about taking costs out of the things that customers don’t care about.

That said, even as retailers work on the basics, they should constantly test and tinker with digital innovations. They should rapidly conduct systematic experiments, ideally cofunded with technology providers or product partners, to confirm the game-changing potential of a particular technology—for example, by measuring its effect on overall conversion or customer loyalty—before making big capital investments to roll it out across the network.

Execute systematically across channels

Change of this scale is not easy and affects many functions across the organization. Some retailers make the mistake of developing a store-network transformation plan that extends past 2020, by which time parts of the plan will probably be obsolete, or else they embark on a massive change program that will take so long to roll out that it will be out of date before it is halfway done. Retailers are typically better served by developing a detailed plan for the next 12 months and a high-level road map for the next three years.

Pace and flexibility are critical. “Gold plating” an entire store takes too long and tends to be expensive. Retailers should instead test new ideas quickly, and they should pilot individual aspects of store design to figure out specifically what is working and what isn’t.

Given the scale of a network redesign, taking a lean approach can significantly reduce capital expenditures and increase return on investment. By using cost-saving levers such as offsite prefabrication, relaxing fixture specifications to widen the supplier pool, applying principles such as design to value and total cost of ownership, and ensuring disciplined project management, a global big-box retailer completed a major store-transformation program 25 percent faster and with 21 percent lower capital expenditures than similar previous programs had involved.

Of course, capabilities and organizational design, both at headquarters and in individual stores, must evolve as the network evolves. Retailers should ask themselves: Does the organizational structure support the new network size and role? What would it take to shift the mind-sets of the property team away from a focus on opening new stores and toward making better use of existing space, introducing and refreshing store concepts quickly, and even scaling back on real estate? How can the online team—which, at some retailers, still has a cottage-industry status—become fully integrated with the stores? This integration is crucial: the store of the future should allow shoppers to move seamlessly across channels. Store staff should be well trained and comfortable in directing customers to the right products, both offline and online. The technology and systems staff members use should be connected to or aligned with the retailer’s website, so that they won’t have to spend precious time trying to reconcile different information. The web can support the stores as well—for example, by showing inventory levels for nearby stores.

The logistics and store teams should work hand in glove with the online team to ensure that orders are fulfilled efficiently and to get products to consumers quickly. Amazon already offers same-day delivery in more than a dozen cities and guarantees one- to two-day ground delivery across the continental United States; we believe consumers will soon expect comparable shipping speeds from all retailers.

Even as retailers reassess and revamp their store networks, they shouldn’t focus exclusively on the stores. A store-network transformation will have the desired impact only if the online channel is at fighting strength. For retailers whose online presence is already robust, it is simply a matter of ensuring a dual focus on both channels. For other retailers, getting the requisite multichannel capabilities and mind-sets in place will require a full transformation. Either way, the online channel must not be neglected in the face of the daunting changes required in the physical-store network. The future of retail will belong to retailers that can satisfy the customer, wherever he or she decides to shop.

This article is adapted from a version that appeared in Perspectives on retail and consumer goods, Number 3, Summer 2014.

by Louise Herring, Tobias Wachinger, and Chris Wigley

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/Making_stores_matter_in_a_multichannel_world?cid=DigitalEdge-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1412

HEALTH SPECIAL..................... 5 Important Things You Probably Didn't Know About Vitamin D

 5 Important Things You 

Probably Didn't Know About 

Vitamin D

When it comes to getting the nutrients and minerals our bodies need, vitamin D should not be overlooked. You might know that this fat-soluble nutrient helps keep your bones strong, but it does so much more. Some of its benefits may even surprise you.

Here are five interesting facts about vitamin D, and how you can make sure you are receiving an adequate amount.

1. You get it through diet and sunlight.

Vitamin D is known as the "sunshine" vitamin because when your skin is exposed to the sun, your body manufactures it. Many people only need about 15 minutes of sun three times a week for their bodies to make adequate amounts of the vitamin, according to the National Institutes of Health.

However, when you're in a cloudy or shady area, or when you use sunscreen (which you should!) your body's ability to make vitamin D is reduced. In addition, ethnic groups with darker skin also produce lower amounts.

Fortunately, you can also get vitamin D from the food you eat. One of the best sources is fatty fish, including salmon and tuna. A 3-ounce serving of salmon contains about 450 international units (IU) of vitamin D.

In addition to fish, most milk sold in the U.S. is fortified with about 100 IU per cup. Other foods that often have the nutrient added are orange juice, yogurt and breakfast cereal. The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamin D is 600 IU for people ages 1 through 70, and 800 IU for older adults.

2. It helps boost the immune system.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen recently determined that vitamin D is necessary to activate the immune system's T-cells that identify and attack bad pathogens circulating throughout the body. Without enough of this vitamin, your body isn't as effective in fighting infection.

Your doctor may give you a blood test to determine if you have adequate levels of vitamin D in your system. If you don't have enough of the nutrient, you may need to take a supplement, either over-the-counter or by prescription.

As with any supplement, be sure to follow the doctor's instructions carefully. It's unusual for people to have too much of the vitamin, but it is possible. Vitamin D toxicity can lead to excess levels of calcium in the blood, which can cause nausea, vomiting and kidney problems.

3. It may help protect against chronic diseases.

Not only does vitamin D help boost the immune system, research suggests it may also help protect against many autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Interestingly, these diseases tend to be more prevalent in locations that are farther away from the equator, where people have less exposure to the sunlight the body needs to make vitamin D on its own.

A study from the University of Toronto found that for patients who already have MS, those who took a high dose of vitamin D supplements had a decrease in relapse rates.

There are also studies that show higher vitamin D intake is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer. There is not enough evidence to recommend vitamin D to specifically prevent this disease, but more research is being done to examine the vitamin's impact on this and other illnesses.

4. It is essential for strong bones and teeth.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium from the food you eat, which is important for normal bone growth and development. Without enough of the nutrient, bones can become brittle and soft. In fact, vitamin D deficiency is linked to osteoporosis in adults and rickets in children.

5. It might help you lose weight.

A University of Minnesota clinical study found that people who started a diet with higher levels of vitamin D in their bodies were able to lose weight more successfully than people who were vitamin D-deficient, even though both groups were placed on a standardized reduced-calorie weight loss diet.

Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition featured women dieters who did not get enough calcium in their diets. It found that one group who took a calcium and vitamin D supplement as part of their diet had more fat loss than another group who did not take the supplement. If you are trying to lose weight, these studies suggest that having adequate amounts of the vitamin can help you with your efforts.

Vitamin D has many benefits for the human body. Whether you get it through sunlight, diet, supplements, or a combination of all three, make sure you are receiving enough of this crucial nutrient. It's an important part of a healthy lifestyle and diet.

Napala Pratini http://www.huffingtonpost.com/