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web store, where a lot of our current sales come from. We
The very point of sale also do a lot of business through [Chinese social media
platform] WeChat.

Bouncepad bloggers pointed out that substandard products
have a short shelf life. Consumers, exposed to hundreds
of brands every day, are "constantly on the search for the
brand with the best total proposition," they wrote. "Product,
service and brand all contribute to the overall perception.
This means brands have to be at the top of their game with
a strong understanding of their target audience, creating
products and messaging that meet their customer's
MLS branding: part expectations."

Find your niche
art, part science The Internet and communication tools like email make it

easy for consumer brands, retailers and merchant service
providers to reach a wider audience, but more difficult to
By Dale S. Laszig become top-of-mind, noted the Bouncepad bloggers. "Word

blog post on Bouncepad got me thinking about travels fast, and consumers find themselves with more
payments. Published Sept. 23, 2018, "Is brand choice than ever," they wrote. "Comparing prices, services
and quality are much easier – there are even websites
loyalty a thing of the past?" chronicles a shift
A in consumer behavior from brand loyalty to dedicated to it."
opportunistic buying. The authors suggest the Internet had
a lot to do with the change. MLSs whose products and services are similar to their
competitors need to stand out from the pack. Brand
positioning can help. Developed in 1969 by advertising
"Pre-technological revolution, it was much harder for executives Al Ries and Jack Trout, positioning links
brands to get their names out there," the authors wrote.
"Consumers were blindly loyal to businesses they had your brand to a specific category in a customer's mind.
The authors understood that marketing is dynamic and
bought from before; they had built a trusted relationship
with them and it was more difficult to find competitor's constantly changing.
offers."
Their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, describes
Sound familiar? In bankcard's pre-Internet era, merchant an overcommunicated world, where messages "prepared in
level salespeople (MLSs) competed with local banks. They the old traditional ways have no hope of being successful."
To effectively compete, companies must "create a position
showed up when merchants needed help, earning gratitude
and referrals. Branded countertop terminals were popular; in a prospect's mind, a position that takes into consideration
not only a company's own strengths and weaknesses, but
MLSs could see who they were up against just by looking
at a terminal. Today they face numerous competitors, those of its competitors as well."
including independent software vendors and boutique
service providers that specialize in vertical markets. Here If a merchant services provider is dominating a particular
territory or market, savvy competitors may look for another
are some thoughts on how to rise above the noise.
category to dominate. This dynamic has been playing out on
Project permanence a massive scale in the payments industry as legacy acquirers
and startups leverage big data, artificial intelligence and
Cheap countertop terminals, like off-the-rack clothes, are machine learning to create smart, connected commerce.
designed to be used and thrown away. In the fashion world,
disruptive companies with agile supply chains react to Empathize
fashion trends by getting products to market with blazing It is challenging to earn customer loyalty when brands
speed. But leading brands, like Burberry, Tom Ford and
Rebecca Minkoff, are fighting back, reducing runway-to- compete for attention and digital technologies make prod-
ucts instantly available, Bouncepad noted. "With com-
market times and challenging consumers to think beyond
transitory trends. petitors like Amazon, which offers next-day delivery and
rarely goes out of stock, brands need to implement technol-
ogy to help eliminate inventory issues and make sure they
In a September 2017 article by Elizabeth Segran titled "Is aren't handing customers over to Amazon," they wrote.
Fashion Week Irrelevant? Rebecca Minkoff and Anna Sui
Weigh in," Minkoff said the fashion industry is changing, The authors cited a Chain Store Age study that attributes
24 percent of Amazon's sales to customers who tried to buy
and iconic brands are trying to keep up. "We're modernizing
by taking advantage of technology," she said. "We have a products that were out of stock at local stores.
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