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Retail Top 100 2012, No. 57: Retail crowdsourcing

July 18, 2012

Crowdsourcing will soon become as commonplace as outsourcing. Retail marketers need more crowdsourcing to open up their talent pool for research and development. The strategy "greatly reduces costs to the retailers because they're only paying for the idea, not the process," says C.J. Kettler of Genius Crowds. "Crowdsourcing provides a way to build sustainable relationships with consumers and thereby develop a deeper connection and better brand loyalty." According to Alisa Gould-Simon, director of marketing and communications at Pose.com, a free mobile shopping application, "Brands are looking at ways to not only listen to their customers but allow them to participate in the online shopping process." Australia-based Shoes of Prey is apparently meeting a tremendous demand by giving women the power to design their own shoes. According to founder Jodie Fox, women have collectively spent more than 15 million minutes designing shoes on their site since the company's launch in October 2009.

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