What consumers wish for when they visit Retail store in 2022?
Image credit: Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
As we move into mid of 2022, more than 75% of population in ASIA have been either fully vaccinated or partially vaccinated according to Our World in Data Org. The cities are opening, mask requirements are easing, and people starting to travel for their vacations domestically and internationally.
Physical store sales have picked-up, and some retailers in ASIA have reached pre-pandemic physical store sales performance. E-commerce sales are stabilising and showing double digit growth forecast in ASIA for the next 5 years according to eMarketer. As per Raydiant, 44.4% of consumers prefer to shop in physical stores. The top reasons being they enjoy the experience of shopping in a store and visiting a physical location (27.6%), and they like to see and touch products directly before purchasing (24.7%).
While 44.4% of consumers prefer to visit physical store to complete their shopping, consumers also shared their top reasons for good in-store experiences are, the product selection and variety at store (31.9%); the quality of customer service (26.4%); and the organisation of store and products within the store (17.5%).
However, there are many friction points in the physical store that impact what consumers call good in-store experiences. Let’s go through the top 3 consumer wishes and the strategies that Retailers whether big or small can implement using technology to build a frictionless shopping experience in the post-pandemic world.
Consumer wish #1: I wish the store carried the products that I want.
Having the right product mix for each channel and location is of highest priority for any retail business. Using the power of Data and AI, retailers can start by segmenting their physical store location to build intelligence around store profiles. Once they are clearer on the profile of customers visiting each location, they can use AI to recommend and optimise the assortment in each store/location. Retailers can complement this with in-store analytics, where they can use AI Cognitive service together with their existing CCTV cameras to analyse the physical movements, shopping journey, dwell time, analyse customer sentiments, and collect basic demographic profiles without invading PII information. Moreover, they can use a similar approach and technology to keep track of products on the shelf in order to reduce out of stock situation and to keep up with planogram compliance.
Consumer wish #2: I wish I could easily find what I’m looking for.
While having the right product mix is the 1st step towards creating good in-store experience, Retailers must also make it easy for consumers to find the product that they’re looking for. Retailers can use in-store navigation technology to help consumers navigate where exactly the products that they are looking for is located. Moreover, retailers can use beacons and geo-location service to personalise in-store experience by alerting store associate once any VIP customers enter the store so they can provide personal assistant to them. In addition, for fashion retailers, consumers also wish that they could quickly try on the clothes that they like without waiting for a long queue at the trial-room. Retailers could deploy virtual smart try-on experience with magic mirror. This would allow consumers to try on many different combinations of clothes that they like virtually on the magic mirror before picking only the one that they have shortlisted to do physical try on and make purchase decision. This will help retailers channel the traffic in the store and build an engaging experience with customers.
Consumer wish #3: I wish I could check out instantly.
Once customers have tried on the products or they have picked their groceries, they generally would like to quickly pay and leave. However, many retailers are still struggling to provide frictionless check-out experience. Depending on the type of business, retailers can deploy many different frictionless check-out technologies. First, they can deploy Scan & Go technology where they allow customers to add the products to cart on their mobile app, and seamlessly check-out using the digital wallet. This is more suitable for a scenario that average item per ticket is not very high. Second, retailers can deploy smart cart technology where they can allow customers to scan and add products to the smart cart attached to the trolley, and seamlessly check-out using their digital wallet. This technology is more suitable and scalable for high volume transaction, like supermarket or hypermarket environment. Lastly, retailers can deploy Pick & Go technology to build a complete autonomous store or autonomous store-in-store experience for fast moving pre-packaged items. This allows the customers to check-in into the store, shop and pick the products that they want to purchase, and just walk out of the store. The customer will be billed automatically on the credit card that is attached to their mobile app. This is more suitable for c-store, pop-up store, train stations, and other smaller formats that have most pre-packaged items, and quick-in / quick-out environment.
In summary there are many benefits for deploying smart store and frictionless check-out technologies. Retailers can create better customer experience in-store and seamlessly connect online to offline experience. They can optimise the labour cost, energy cost, and cost to maintain equipment in the store. However, the true benefit of deploying smart store technologies is retailer would have access to valuable data that they never had in the past. If used correctly, retailers can unlock huge potentials to improve their top-line and reduce their bottom-line.
Source: Raydiant, state of consumer behaviour 2022; Our world in data org.com June 2022; eMarketer retail sales forecast December 2021.