MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT CO-OP: DIGITAL STRATEGY

Overview - The vice-president of marketing and communications at Mountain Equipment

Co-op, a retailer of outdoor sporting goods, is examining its marketing strategy following the
decision to stop producing its physical catalogue. The 40-year-old retailer wants to broaden
its reach beyond its hard-core group of customers. Although it currently has an online
presence, it needs to further develop its online sales and outreach programs, which must be
solved tactfully to allow progression, as well as maintain a competitive position.  It identifies
the issues or gap between the current and desired type of the organization, and thus requires
to be stated in order for the management to look for change.

MEC founders realised that the people’s leisure habits have changed dramatically and the
youth was less active than from the past. They wanted to embody the spirit that the people
were adventurous, entrepreneurial.

MEC had three long-term goals. First, it aimed to increase participation in self-propelled
wilderness oriented recreation in Canada, which was the core reason for its existence. They
wanted to tap into the market for the consumers who were looking to become active, such as
those buying their first pair of hiking shoes or their first serious bicycle. They wanted a
broader customer base. Second, MEC aimed to support the creation and stewardship of a
comprehensive network of parks, wilderness and outdoor recreation opportunities in Canada.
Third, MEC aimed to foster change toward environmental, social and economic sustainability
in the marketplace.

Moving away from the printing and mailing of biannual catalogues — a total of one million
copies per year — was thought to have saved MEC approximately $2 million a year. The
savings, would be rolled into funding MEC’s new marketing effort, including outdoor
advertising and online activities. In total, seven people worked in MEC’s social media areas.
They wanted to strike a balance between generating fresh content and ensuring that the
content fit with MEC’s brand also to manage the blog content to serve their needs. MEC also
purchased a text analytics software from Clarabridge. The new online store was launched
which featured sharper pictures of products, key product details and allowed customers to
provide feedback for others to read. Also online store optimized for mobile phones was
released. Customer engagement was the new but that still wanted all of Canada to feel that
MEC is their outdoors store. The decision to stop producing and mailing a biannual catalogue
would result in savings that the VP redeployed towards the new marketing campaign. Also,
MEC wanted to do a better job converting website visits and PDF catalogue views into sales.
MEC also looked into developing YouTube content and search engine marketing, harnessing
user-generated content and creating content in-house. The staffing and budgeting was also
looked upon as to places for website upgrading, digital promotion and also traditional
advertising to reach out to the customers.The Marketing tools and its possible metrics were
decided to measure the effectiveness. Some of them included conversion rate of visits to
sales, page views, number of retweets. The staffing and budgeting was also looked upon as to
places for website upgrading, digital promotion and also traditional advertising to reach out to
the customers.