Miya Knights, author, consultant and publisher of RetailTechnology.co.uk, joins Natalie Berg to break down the biggest news stories reshaping retail.
They discuss:
Recent changes to loyalty schemes at major UK retailers Boots and M&S. Are points-based schemes becoming a thing of the past as consumers demand real-time value and rewards? Or are these changes a sign that loyalty schemes are too costly to run at a time when retailers are facing an incredible amount of cost pressure themselves? Would you pay £120 a year for an Amazon Prime-style Sparks Plus subscription? And why is Amazon’s Prime membership so successful?
Instacart becoming the latest player in the retail space to trial ChatGPT. What is it and why have the grocers been so quick to jump on this new technology? Who is using it today and what are the AI opportunities for non-food retailers in the future?
Barcelona’s plans to halve emissions from delivery vehicles with 40% of online orders to be delivered to collection points, instead of individual homes, by 2030. Will other cities follow suit? Is this proof that the future of e-commerce really is click & collect? And how is Amazon decarbonising the last mile in Europe?
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‘Permacrisis’ was declared the word of 2022, so what might 2023 bring?
There are reasons for cautious optimism, but first retailers are going to have to buckle up and brace themselves for more turbulence.
Spending more to buy less
Let’s briefly recap on retail’s Golden Quarter. Christmas was not the wipe-out that many of us had expected. After a bumpy couple of years with Covid cancelling Christmas, consumers were determined not to let illness, inflationary pressures or industrial action hamper their celebrations.
There are some caveats here: soft comparatives (remember Omicron?); supermarket success came at the expense of the hospitality sector; and perhaps most importantly much of the growth we saw was fuelled by inflation – in December retail sales were up in value terms but volumes continued to fall. In other words, consumers are spending more to buy less.
Inflation might be starting to ease, but consumers are still a long way from feeling the benefit. This ongoing erosion of spending power makes for a pretty gloomy outlook: consumer confidence tanked again in January, returning to a near 50-year low. Looking ahead, the deterioration in consumer sentiment is likely to persist throughout the first half of the year, at least. A reminder to retailers that value will remain firmly top of mind, purchases will continue to be incredibly considered, and big-ticket discretionary buys will be delayed.
Trimming the fat
The spending hangover is here and while there’s never a good time for subdued consumer demand, it’s especially painful when retailers are simultaneously grappling with their own cost inflation. No one is immune: this dangerous combination of soft demand and rising costs is impacting even the most bulletproof retailers. Amazon, for example, is laying off 6% of its global workforce, closing warehouses and putting the brakes on bricks & mortar expansion. 2023 will be a year of operational efficiencies for retailers, in many ways mirroring their own customers’ behaviour by trying to do more with less.
The other immediate challenge for retailers will be shifting excess stock, the result of over-ordering during the supply chain crisis and exacerbated by the current consumer weakness. With a glut of inventory and sluggish demand, retailers are left with little choice but to slash prices. But wait, haven’t they been doing that for the past four months? Aside from the obvious margin implications here, there is also the risk that shoppers are becoming desensitised as promotion fatigue sets in – or even worse, that they forget what it’s like to buy at full price.
2023 opportunities: bricks & mortar resurgence and immersive digital experiences
There’s no sugarcoating it: 2023 is going to be another year of instability and uncertainty. But the retail industry is nothing if not resilient and I believe there are reasons to be optimistic. Stores are back, they’re repurposed and better than ever. We’ve been thrust into the future thanks to the pandemic-induced digitization of bricks & mortar retail, levelling the playing field and shifting the industry’s perception. Stores were once considered liabilities in this digital era, but they’ve been reconfigured for 21st century shopping and are now essential assets.
When it comes to customer experience, I believe that ‘tech-enabled human touch’ will be the next battleground, as retailers recognise the many opportunities that come with equipping your staff with the right digital tools. Mediocre experiences have become a thing of the past. Meanwhile, automation will climb higher up the agenda as retailers look to achieve operational efficiencies, despite the initial outlay, while simultaneously addressing the current labour shortage. In 2023, we’ll see more trials of autonomous vehicles delivering our goods and robots working alongside humans in warehouses.
Shoppers will continue to abandon e-commerce in droves now that we have returned to some semblance of normality. Some categories like food, fashion and furniture will never transition online like the rest of retail has, but it’s clear that as an industry we have been propelled towards a more digital world. And over the next decade, new, immersive digital experiences will redefine our perception of e-commerce – this is going to be the next big thing in retail. I’m still a bit of a metaverse sceptic. I know barriers can be knocked down but right now how many of us really have a VR headset kicking around at home? However, it’s clear that e-commerce is ready to evolve. Sure, all of the friction has been sucked out and today the experience is wildly accessible, slick, effortless. But is it any fun? Not really. It’s still far too transactional, too one-dimensional. This will change.
The next stage of e-commerce is all about immersion, discovery, curation, hyper-personalisation and escapism. And it’s already happening with augmented reality, virtual showrooms, live shopping, social commerce, 3D product views/virtual try-ons, video shopping consultations, among others. In the future, we won’t know where the physical world ends and the digital one begins.
Our hybrid way of living is here to stay and while businesses may still be acclimatising to the consequent shifts in demand patterns, longer term this will present new and exciting customer engagement opportunities. Despite tight budgets, investment in sustainability will remain high on the agenda in 2023, while opportunities to tackle the often-neglected post-purchase experience and explore new revenue streams such as retail media and third-party marketplaces will accelerate. In summary, short-term volatility will persist while consumers batten down the hatches, but as always the future of retail is bright for those who are willing to evolve.
It was wonderful to sit down with Mark Thomson to talk through the findings of the 15th Annual Global Shopper Study from Zebra Technologies.
Here’s what stood out for me:
💵 While nearly 75% of shoppers say inflation has caused them to delay purchases, they’re still returning to stores but most (76%) want to get in and out as quickly as possible.
😯 3 in 4 shoppers leave without the items they intended to purchase, with 49% blaming out-of-stocks.
📶 More than two-thirds of associates are concerned that shoppers are more connected to information than they are.
🙂 Seven-in-10 shoppers are satisfied with help from retail associates, compared to only 37% in 2007.
📱 Pandemic habits are sticking: approximately 90% of shoppers said they are likely to continue using technologies such as a personal shopping device, mobile cashless payment and self-checkout. And retailers are responding: nearly HALF of retailers said they would convert more manned till space to self-checkout in the future.
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Where next for bricks & mortar retail? Is hyper-personalisation about to go mainstream and what are the opportunities for retailers? I discuss all of this and more with Thierry Gadou, Chairman & CEO of SES-imagotag, a company that invents IoT and digital technologies that create a positive impact on society by enabling sustainable and human-centered commerce.
After surviving a pandemic and digital disruption more broadly, have physical stores finally proven their worth?
To be frank, the past two years haven’t been so negative for many omnichannel physical retailers. Many are actually better off than before COVID, despite the twin pressures of adapting to the consumer shift to digital and a challenging economic backdrop. Stores are back. The most successful retailers have recognised that their physical stores can be high value digital assets. Stores have proven that they are essential and at the very core of omnichannel commerce – but they need to be better stores. There is still a lot of work to do when it comes to transforming the physical space.
Let’s explore that transformation in more detail. How can retailers adapt their business models to stay relevant in this digital era?
Firstly, we have to acknowledge that there will be a divergence between the pioneers and the laggards. The winners are going to be those who make their physical stores an incredible experience by offering advice and levels of service that e-commerce companies cannot provide, while simultaneously repurposing their stores to become fulfilment and collection hubs.
Online retailers have historically had a huge data advantage but there is now an opportunity to leverage in-store data to optimise the customer experience. Take grocery, for example. E-commerce might be just 5-10% of a supermarket’s sales. Imagine all of the rich insights you could get if you actually transform your stores, where the bulk of sales actually take place, in a way that makes capturing that data possible in the first instance?
Right now, the only way retailers make money is to sell products. They are missing a clear opportunity to capitalise on shopper traffic. In-store retail media is a major opportunity. By digitising the shelf edge, retailers are able to provide very efficient advertising real estate to brands and create new sources of revenue which, in turn, can fund further store transformation. None of this is easy but the time has come. There is more opportunity today to implement such a vision than there has ever been.
Thierry Gadou, Chairman & CEO of SES-imagotag
So how can retailers leverage in-store data and what are the benefits?
Physical retailers have a good understanding of the products that have sold, but what about the ones that didn’t? We are helping retailers to produce more data in-store by monitoring the shelves, automating the detection of stockouts and enabling mobile interactions. In the cookie-less world that we are entering, first party data is going to be the rule of the game.
There are two aspects to this. Firstly, the in-store operational data – this is what happens at the shelf. So, it’s stockouts, facings, planogram compliance. Brands today are still sending tens of thousands of people into the field to manually check for themselves. We’ve seen enormous improvements to the supply chain over the past 20 years, but the reality is that the level of stockouts has remained unchanged. And that’s down to the inaccuracy of inventory data in stores. Retailers are sitting on an absolute goldmine, but they need to go after it. How do you get the data right? Through sensors and computer vision.
And this is a win-win-win opportunity. It provides an additional source of revenue for retailers, a huge cost savings for brands and a superior experience for customers in the form of fresher products and better availability.
The second aspect here is customer data. With digitised shelf edges, you are able to communicate with customers at the very strategic moment of purchase. You can reach them with very targeted, relevant messaging which can be further personalised by their mobiles.
We have scaled this and we know it works. Brands are seeing better CPMs (Cost per Mille) and higher conversion rates in stores. All of this is within reach today.
Let’s talk more about hyper-personalisation. Will we see a shift towards more tailored, real-time promotions in the future?
One of the great aspects of the physical store experience is discovery. In five minutes in a store, you can discover so many more products than you would if you were scrolling on your phone. So, that’s great but the range can also be overwhelming and hard to navigate.
We have worked with Monoprix, for example, to digitise the shelf edge and enable a highly tailored in-store experience. The customer can set their criteria, for example cheapest, organic-only or items with a low carbon footprint. The app will direct the customer to the aisle and, once there, he/she just presses a button on their smartphone and the products that correspond to the previously set criteria will flash in the aisle.
Another example is when you get closer to a product that you’re interested in, you’ll receive a tailored message to scan the QR code with your phone and perhaps receive a special promotion that is exclusively for you. So, when we talk about the shift towards personalised pricing, that’s going to be very mobile-centric. The use of mobile and NFC (Near Field Communication) or QR codes is going to get you that level of personalisation, even in a mass market setting.
These services encourage the customer to use their smartphone in the store and the magic is then that the customer is providing retailers and brands with valuable first party data, further fuelling the retail media opportunity.
As the boundaries between online and offline continue to blur, perhaps we need to stop referring to stores as “physical retail”?
Physical commerce is the wrong word; it’s human commerce. Shoppers today want convenience and tolerance to any form of friction is history, but shopping is still a social experience. It’s a five senses experience. It’s so much more than just the product on shelf. The problem is that stores today don’t often provide that experience. Automation, AI and data can make the store much easier to operate, which frees up staff time to be more available to customers and have those meaningful engagements. It’s all about the technology behind the scenes that enables this 21st century experience.
The most successful consumer-facing businesses today are those that uncover their customers’ needs first and then work backwards to provide the right experience. In theory, customer experience should have always been at the heart of retailers’ strategies from day one. After all, the whole point of retail is to serve the customer. But, let’s face it, for a long time, retailers were able to dictate the terms.
As Eddie Capel, CEO of Manhattan Associates, told me at the Manhattan Exchange in Berlin last month: “We got used to a no culture. Do you have my size? No. When might it be back in stock? Dunno. There was a lot of no in retail for a long time. Retail has turned into a ‘yes culture’.”
But what sparked that change? I was intrigued to hear his thoughts because this formed the very foundation of my and Miya Knights’ Amazon book, so I naturally had a few ideas of my own on the topic.
Eddie Capel, CEO of Manhattan Associates, says the retail industry has shifted to a ‘yes culture’
“Retailers did not have to worry about loyalty, but that has changed immensely now. Creating a ‘yes culture’ has become key, and Amazon and others have pushed retailers on service and delivery promises. Technology is helping to keep those promises,” Capel added.
I couldn’t agree more. As customers today, our tolerance for mediocrity is pretty low. We expect to shop on our terms. We no longer accept bland, vanilla retail experiences. Instead, we want the red carpet rolled out for us. We want a white-glove experience. We want to be wowed, surprised and delighted.
Retailers have made significant progress in blending the physical and digital worlds, but there is still more to do. In the whitepaper that I authored for Manhattan Associates, we found that just 6% of retailers that we surveyed have an accurate view of their inventory across their entire business 100% of the time. I have to admit, that figure shocked me given that we are living in this on-demand era where customers are hyper-informed and, in Capel’s words, retailers need to be “promise keepers”. How seamless of an experience can you offer if you don’t consistently know where your stock is?
Another area where I see room for improvement – and this was reaffirmed by the report – is returns. Even today, the post-purchase experience is often neglected. For example, only around half of retailers we spoke to allow customers to buy online and return in-store (46%) or buy in-store and return online (50%).
Enabling this level of flexibility and cohesion will enhance the experience for the customer, but more needs to be done to stamp out returns from happening in the first place. The industry needs to collectively address its perennial problem. In recent years, retailers themselves have exacerbated this problem in an attempt to appease the customer – offering free returns and encouraging a buy-to-try mentality.
There is some progress being made, for example around sizing/fit among fashion retailers. Some have even gone to the extreme of charging for returns, very much uncharted territory for a sector where over one-third of purchases are returned. And let’s not forget, as counter intuitive as it may seem, those big returners are often a retailer’s most valuable customers.
But it’s better for all parties to get it right in the first instance. Looking across the wider retail industry, another way to reduce the rate of returns is by giving customers greater control over fulfilment. As things currently stand, all control is lost once the customer places an order. If they want to change their delivery or edit their basket, it’s simply too late. It then becomes a return.
Giving customers more control post-purchase doesn’t just translate to a better customer experience – which ultimately drives greater loyalty – but it also has both economic and environmental benefits. Brian Kinsella, SVP, Product Management argues that customers should be granted a window in which they could change their mind on fulfilment method, for example switching from home delivery to click & collect and vice versa. Kinsella even believes that shoppers should be able to cancel an online order. Why? To drive down returns, or what he calls “unnecessary shipments”.
In Berlin, Kinsella also called out the importance of communication post-purchase. More retailers, for example, should be utilising real-time messaging with home delivery, again to simultaneously improve the experience for the customer while ensuring someone is in to receive the delivery.
Historically, retailers may have begrudged looking beyond immediate customer needs, but today it’s imperative that retailers proactively address pain points. They need to be continuously re-evaluating the customer journey, identifying and removing any new points of friction and ensuring that they are going above and beyond. The risk of inaction is simply too great.
Retailers have accelerated digital transformation strategies over the past few years. How have you seen the industry evolve?
Retail is in the process of redefining itself and we continue to see the repurposing of the physical store in this new digital world. You can leverage more aspects of a physical store compared to a purely online engagement. This is why retailers need to view their stores as assets, rather than just a weight of costs. It doesn’t matter if people buy while in the store; what matters is we influence them.
The industry is now in a more complex phase than at any other point in its history, but retailers don’t want technology companies throwing solutions at them. What they want to know: is who is doing it well? Who should we look at and how do we get there?
Ten years ago, everybody trekked off to New York in January [for the NRF show] because the US was leading the way in technology. I think that’s kind of changed now. European retailers have become trailblazers, especially when it comes to online adoption in places like the UK, Netherlands and the Nordics.
Let’s talk automation. It gets a bad rap at times, so can you talk us through the drivers and benefits?
When I talk about automation and productivity solutions, I always get asked: “Doesn’t that just put people out of work?” Well, a lot of retailers are struggling to find people. It’s not a case of retailers wanting to reduce the staff they have, it’s just that they can’t attract people in the first place. People today don’t want to work a 40-hour-plus week in a retail environment, so retailers are left trying to find ways to improve productivity among their existing staff.
Also, with wages increasing rapidly, the cost per employee has also increased, meaning higher productivity is a key goal. Retailers are there to provide the goods, services, and experiences that consumers want, but they also need to make a profit for the business. And everywhere you look today – supply chain, fuel, lighting, labour – input costs are going up.
In conjunction with this, shoppers are increasingly choosing self-service options and retailers have to implement automation technologies to support that, from self-scanning to electronic shelf edge labels as well as robotics. All play a part, but staff will continue to be crucial in delivering the best experience, so I see a hybrid future.
I totally agree. Tech-enabled human touch is going to separate the winners from the losers going forward. How can mobile technology in particular improve the associate experience?
We have to move to a situation where all staff are connected – to communicate with other members of staff, to self-serve in terms of their scheduling, just to name a couple of examples.
Believe it or not, many store associates today are using WhatsApp groups to communicate. The retailers I’ve spoken to don’t officially allow it but they’re essentially turning a blind eye to it because that is currently the best way to boost productivity and collaboration. Store managers are still spending several hours a week creating rotas in Excel. And we’re still running and monitoring stores based on old measures, for example asking staff to leave their mobile phones in their lockers.
Staff want more flexibility. They want to choose if they want to work on Saturday night. They want to look for a shift rather than being told to work one. The bulk of today’s retail workforce have grown up with technology, so automation is well suited to meet their needs and, at the same time, it helps retailers to manage their productivity and profitability. It will generally make the workplace a better place to be because you’ll end up with happier customers.
Let’s explore that in more detail. Customer experience is becoming the new battleground in retail. How might the role of store staff need to change to support this shift?
There’s only one way to an amazing customer experience and that is staff experience. If you employ the right staff, train and incentivise them in the right way, and give them the right tools to get the job done… then they become your ambassadors.
When a customer leaves the store dissatisfied, it’s usually due to 1 of 2 reasons: either they can’t find the product they’re looking for or the staff were unable to help. As an industry, we need to address this. Retail has become very operational and functional. It’s no longer somewhere people look to as a career. This has to change – how do you make retail an attractive career? There needs to be progression and it needs to be enjoyable.
But store staff today have more tasks than they did 5-10 years ago. Complexity and workloads for retailers have increased to incorporate not only store operations but also for online fulfillment, so staff are now tasked with serving customers while also handling collections, processing returns, etc. As soon as they get any free time, they’re filling gaps on the shelves. There’s no down time. A decade ago, it was a more relaxed environment. Still pressured but nothing like today. You can’t throw more staff at this problem, you need technology.
We want happy customers. We want to be able to predict exactly what those customers want. We don’t want to have too few products. We also don’t want to have too many. The more technology you add to your store, the more data you generate which you can then analyse further to improve the set-up, process, assortment and staffing.
Let’s close by discussing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Has its time finally come and, if so, why now?
It’s a great question and one I get asked every year. Retailers across all sectors know the technology and at some point have looked into it. The drivers now are different, and I think this will see a renewed growth of adoption.
RFID enables greater confidence in store stocks allowing the store to be a distributed online fulfilment centre. Higher stock accuracy levels reduce overstocks, which improves the bottom line (critical at this challenging financial time). Customer satisfaction improves too, as they have better visibility of items available. Meanwhile, retail staff are able to quickly respond to out-of-stocks by ordering the product from another store or the DC and having it delivered (what we call “saving the sale”). Everybody wins. The technology is tried and tested but as the benefits and implementation elements hit multiple departments, the project needs high level support. When a project gets this, it’s transformational.
Mark and his team at Zebra have just launched a Retail Maturity Model to help retailers on their technology journey. Learn more about the roadmap and how it can help retailers to improve inventory visibility and labour management.
Greetings from Germany! I’m here at the Manhattan Exchange in Berlin and am super excited to share with you a new report that I’ve authored for Manhattan Associates: Recalibrating for the Next Normal.
The pandemic may have accelerated digital transformation strategies, but what comes next? We spoke to 3,500 consumers and 700 leading retailers across the US and Europe to get a better sense of the consumer landscape and the capabilities required as retailers recalibrate for this next stage.
The findings of this international research study highlight the need for retailers to continue to keep up with the pace of evolving consumer expectations. It also revealed a retail landscape where the lines between physical and digital commerce are becoming increasingly opaque and complicated.
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Sydney, Australia - 2020-10-17 Amazon prime boxes and envelopes delivered to a front door of residential building
The COVID crisis has upended shopping habits and forever changed the world of retail, according to the second edition of Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce. Authors Natalie Berg and Miya Knights argue that while COVID sounded the death knell for many businesses, one retailer in particular has come out stronger: Amazon is hands-down the undisputed winner of the pandemic.
With crisis comes opportunity – for Amazon at least. While many retailers muddled their way through the pandemic, Amazon propelled itself into new industries, made blockbuster acquisitions, launched new products and brands, and doubled down on technology. The retailer hired hundreds of thousands of employees, unveiled new store formats, turned disused malls into warehouses, and even added a couple of new markets to its roster. A key theme of this crisis is that the strong will emerge stronger.
“Amazon’s business model may not have been intentionally built for a pandemic, but it has turned out to be highly relevant in such a climate,” said co-author Natalie Berg. “Amazon is seemingly invincible these days. The pandemic-induced shift towards a more digital world has strengthened every aspect of its business – retail, cloud computing, advertising, Prime and Alexa.”
Amazon is now firing on all cylinders. It has woven itself into the fabric of our everyday lives and, in the absence of regulatory intervention, will continue to benefit from post-pandemic tailwinds,” concluded Berg.
The authors argue that the pandemic has afforded Amazon a unique opportunity to tighten its grip on consumers and bolster its broader ecosystem by:
Reinforcing its status as the indispensable route to market
Further embedding itself in consumers’ homes
Accelerating its vision as a technology vendor
Co-author Miya Knights added: “The second edition underlines Amazon’s seismic digitally-enabled impact on the retail landscape. Technology has always moved at breakneck speed, but the added catalytic effect of the pandemic has only spurred Amazon’s ambitions to use its tech advantage to consolidate and grow its dominant market position.”
Knights continued: “This is a crucial time of transition for new CEO Andy Jassy as he is tasked with convincing lawmakers that Amazon’s ubiquity is good for the economy – and for democracy as a whole. His number one job will be ensuring Amazon doesn’t go from disruptor to disrupted.”
The book also advises how retailers can co-exist with Amazon and identifies six key retail trends being accelerated by the pandemic:
The demise of ‘status-quo retail’
Digital transformation: COVID will finish what Amazon started
The digital store: frictionless shopping and no-touch checkout
The store as a fulfilment hub: the future of e-commerce is stores
The democratisation of white-glove service
The shift to conscious consumption
With the first edition now translated into more than a dozen languages, Amazon is an invaluable resource for discovering the lessons that can be learned from the retailer’s unprecedented rise to dominance.
To arrange an interview with Natalie or Miya, or to request a sample chapter, please email hello@nbkretail.com.
About the authors:
Natalie Berg is a Retail Analyst and Founder of NBK Retail, a consultancy specialising in retail strategy and future trends. Regarded as one of the world’s Top 20 retail influencers, Natalie has led research and given talks on a range of industry topics including: reimagining retail for the post-pandemic digital era, store of the future, the convergence of physical and digital retail, customer loyalty and discount retailing. She is a regular TV and radio commentator and her views on retail have been published in the FT, Guardian, BBC and The Times, among others. Natalie is also a guest contributor for Forbes and Retail Week.
Miya Knights is Global Content Strategist at poq Commerce, with 25 years’ experience as an analyst, journalist and editor specializing in retail enterprise technology use. Based in Sussex, she is the owner and publisher of Retail Technology magazine and has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 and Euronews and commented in The Telegraph, The Times and The Financial Times among others, as well as regularly speaking at or moderating industry events. She has also been recognised as the 2021 Arts & Media Senior Leader by the Black British Business Awards.
Imagine a world where shoppers can walk into a clothing store, scan the price tag on a dress, and complete payment on the spot. Imagine a world where virtual stylists allow shoppers to seamlessly pay by link, or a world where instore shoppers collecting their online orders aren’t just handed a package but are greeted with personalised recommendations to complement their purchase.
This world isn’t so far off, according to Manhattan Associates Solutions Executive Joe Kamara. “We’ve built a unified platform that brings the best of traditional Point of Sale (POS), order management and store operations together so you can orchestrate these different flows.”
In conversation with Natalie Berg, Retail Analyst and Founder of NBK Retail, Kamara said that the next generation POS is being accelerated by the pandemic-driven shift to digital. While in crisis mode last year, retailers quickly pivoted to ensure that stores could continue serving customers via click & collect and kerbside pickup, while simultaneously processing online returns instore. Kamara believes that this behaviour will outlast the pandemic, reinforcing the need for retailers to ensure they are equipped with the right tools to seamlessly serve the customer across multiple touchpoints.
Considering POS as part of the customer experience journey
For many retailers around the globe, this is becoming basic hygiene. Even in the years leading up to the pandemic, the role of POS was being drastically redefined as the industry adapted for the digital era.
Pre-purchase – traditionally, retailers took a store-only view of the customer and the sharing of data and shopper preferences across channels was limited. Today, there is an enterprise view of the customer, and retailers have full visibility into purchase history as well as sharing of digital data.
Purchase– when it came to out-of-stocks, the experience used to be “filled with roadblocks and friction”, according to Kamara. Today, however, thanks to retailers’ endless aisle capabilities, shoppers can make a single purchase for items that are available both in and out of the store.
Post-purchase – it’s difficult to cast our minds back to a time when stores would not accept online returns, given the ease and proliferation of choice today when it comes to returning goods purchased online.
The industry has come a long way to meet the needs of the 21st century shopper who wants to shop on their terms, irrespective of device or channel used. But, as we witness a post-pandemic acceleration in the convergence of physical and digital retail, it’s imperative that retailers continue to move the dial, removing any remaining friction points from the instore experience. This is no time for complacency.
For example, if we go back to the perennial problem of out-of-stocks, it’s hard to believe that even in this day and age, only a small minority of retailers are capable of offering in-store purchasing from another store’s inventory. From a customer experience perspective, this feels entirely unacceptable given the industry’s broader efforts to digitize the physical store. Not only do retailers risk losing the sale but it can be detrimental to brand loyalty in the long-term too.
In order to meet customers’ supercharged expectations, retailers must adopt a sell/fulfil/engage anywhere mentality. However, when it comes to future-ready POS implementation, retailers often make three common mistakes, according to Kamara:
Adopting a store-only plan, damaging future agility
Minimal investment in change (e.g. limited budget for user training; limited project communication plan)
Selecting a “proven” vendor with old technology
All too often, retail organisations are still thinking in silos. Instead, Kamara recommends that retailers develop a unified commerce roadmap (POS + order management), make a clear plan for organisational change and select the right vendor capable of delivering on the long-term.
You can find out more about Manhattan Associates’ POS solutions here.
Big media day yesterday covering the news that Amazon has debuted its checkout-free store concept in London.
This is watershed moment for U.K. retail. Amazon is known for disrupting the status quo, raising customer expectations and forcing competitors to raise their game. Remember Amazon is a tech company first, retailer second. The big question is – does Amazon really want to become Britain’s biggest supermarket or perhaps it’s more lucrative to license this tech to… everyone else? Either way, Amazon transformed the checkout experience online and will now do the same in-store. Goodbye, friction!
