Inspiration Index
Internet Retailing ‘s “Inspiration Index” – uncovering sources of ideas, admiration and innovation in ecommerce.
Speaking with senior etailers we’re struck by the attention they pay to competitor and peer activity, continually seeking new ideas, better ways and cunning angles to improve their multichannel activity. Internet Retailing’s Inspiration Index (IRII) will collect, measure and assess the sources of inspiration in an annual cycle, based on six ‘dimensions’ of inspiration.
What do we mean by ‘inspiration’?
We’re focusing on those moments of admiration, enjoyment and – frankly – envy: when we look at another retailer’s activities and wish we’d thought of that first, had implemented as well, or have an open regard for a difficult problem elegantly overcome.
We decided not to go down a company or ‘awards’ approach since these tend to favour the established large players or the shiny new ones – in reality we’ve found that people covet the delivery capabilities of one, the design elements of another and the promotional campaigns of yet others.
There are six ‘dimensions’ to the Inspiration Index:
- Moments of brilliance and delight
- Customer experience
- Operations and IT
- Merchandising
- Marketing
- Strategy (VOTING NOW OPEN!)
How will it work?
Every other month we’ll ask our readers and members of the LinkedIn group to undertake a short survey on ONE of the dimensions. We’ll then cover the results in the coming edition of the magazine.
Over time we’ll build a picture of inspiration in internet retailing.
Best of all the winners will know that they’ve been nominated and rated by their professional peers — this is not a PR-led or sponsorship-driven activity: you can’t buy or promote prominence — it’s a question of whether you inspire others!
We’re really pleased to be partnering with eDigital Research on this. We’ve worked with them a great deal in the past and we welcome their support as a research partner on this project, helping shape the questionnaire and analysing the results.
I hope that you’ll make the time to take the surveys and we’re really excited to see the results!
