Mass retail must keep its finger on the pulse.(OPINION)(Brief article)

For mass market retailers and their suppliers it's no longer enough to simply run a good store or make a good product. To flourish in the 21st century they must master a broad range of disciplines and maintain an effective presence on a number of diverse fronts, prominent among them the media and the Internet.

As if all that weren't enough, advances in technology and communications will continue to increase the complexity of doing business. A new study from the Conference Board highlights one of those challenges, the emergence of virtual worlds.

While the applicability of the three-dimensional, Internet-based, social-networking communities to retailers and consumer-packaged-goods companies might at first seem to be slight, the report, "Crafting a Strategy for Virtual Worlds: Eight Questions to Ask," asserts that they have the potential to make a significant impact on business. Virtual worlds bring together like-minded individuals in real time, according to the study, creating an environment where companies can engage in "v-commerce," place ads and obtain exposure for products, build organizational experience, and interact with existing and future customers in new ways.

Businesses are often unaware of their significance.

"In many quarters virtual worlds are met with skepticism," notes Edward Roche, the report's author. "Some managers are stuck. They assume that since the underlying technologies for virtual worlds come from video games, there could not possibly be any relevance for their business. Other managers simply may not have heard of virtual worlds."

Retailers and CPG manufacturers ignore such developments at their peril. While virtual worlds may well prove to be nothing more than an amusing diversion for technology enthusiasts, they could become a force in shaping consumer perceptions about products and services, and the best places to obtain them.

Whatever the eventual effect of virtual words on the mass market, the Conference Board is on target in its perception that businesses of all kinds will have to keep pace with the latest technology if they intend to fully understand what their customers expect.