Tag: Shopping experience

Omni-channel Challenges – Retailers need to tackle the risk

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ETP blog 91-omnichannel-challenges

The customer is at the center of the omni-channel retail experience. The new breed of shoppers – ‘omni-channel shoppers’ are demanding and how. They want seamless shopping across channels – offline, online, mobile, and so on. They want to switch between channels at their own will. They expect hassle-free transactions. And they want all this everywhere and every time. Catering to such kind of shoppers requires retailers to reinvent their strategies when it comes to omni-channel.

Omni-channel shopping is not merely transactional, it is the composite shopping experience where a shopper researches about the product, seeks peer opinions, purchases it, chooses a delivery option followed by after sales service. This entire journey might seem pretty simple but there are challenges that could become deterrents to the seamless shopping experience retailers need to provide to their customers.

One of the main challenges that retailers need to deal with is the random switching of customers between channels during any stage of the shopping journey. So the customer might wish to research online and buy in-store or buy online and collect at the store, and so on. There are endless permutations and combinations of how the customer chooses to interact and transact with the brand. This means the brand needs to be ready and available to the customer at the desired touchpoint and time that the customer demands.

The random switching between channels by the customers can further pose additional challenges. One such being that inventory information across channels needs to be updated and available for the customer to peruse. For example, if a shopper is looking online for a particular brand and model of a mobile phone, she gets the necessary information, compares it with another competitor and finds that the deal is better at the competitor’s end, she may just decide to switch loyalty. So, a lost sale!

Another important challenge is the availability of the product when the customer wants it. The retailer needs to handle order fulfilment according to the timeframe and the channel the customer demands. Order fulfilment has been one of the major issues retailers need to get right when it comes to omni-channel. The right technology can enable retailers to manage omni-channel fulfilment to meet all customer demands.

The essence of omni-channel is unifying all channels so as to provide a seamless customer experience but the multiple touchpoints being used are posing steep challenges. There are other challenges that retailers looking to omni-channelize their business are facing, they will be delved into soon.

Four Emerging Trends in this Revolutionary Era of Shopping

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Everything about how the modern day consumers research, shop and purchase is changing, and established retail brands and businesses must learn to adapt. A new era of shopping has emerged leading to 4 trends:

ETP blog four-emerging-trends-in-this-revolutionary-era-of-shopping

From ‘online-to-offline’ is gaining momentum – Big online-only players such as Amazon are increasingly eyeing and realizing the value of traditional stores to grow and generate profits. In the age of omni-channel retailing, it is insufficient for large e-commerce companies to exclusively sell online as brick-and-mortar stores are the go-to destinations where consumers get the chance to touch and feel the products. Hence e-commerce players are setting up their own physical stores to allow consumers to try products prior to buying, or they are partnering with local stores to enable shoppers to collect the products they have purchased online. The convergence of the physical and digital channel into a seamless omni-channel world is accelerating.

Stores stay relevant, important, but they are evolving – An online only retail world doesn’t seem to be a possibility and brick-and-mortar stores are far from getting extinct. Even today, offline stores continue to drive the overwhelming majority of retail sales globally. However, stores are no more merely places to make purchases; they are now evolving into entertainment hubs and social destinations allowing shoppers to explore and connect. This new wave of “experiential retail†is fast gaining momentum.

Delivery options are growing and time frames shrinking – Urban online shoppers today can expect same day deliveries and next day deliveries after placing an order thanks to retailers exploring new options of delivering packages more efficiently and economically. Retailers are trying to further reduce delivery time frames with the help of existing logistics partners or signing on with startups. And while groundbreaking technologies such as self-driving cars and delivery drones could revolutionize delivery, retail companies are using the right technologies enabling products ordered online to be collected at the stores in a matter of hours.

Shopping patterns are changing globally – None of the above trends are restricted to a particular region or a single market. Similarly, innovation is not limited to any one region. For example, China was where expansive urban delivery networks made same-day e-commerce deliveries common in large cities, and it was there that the term ‘online-to-offline’ originated. So also, in other retail markets around the globe, the connection between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail stores is swiftly growing in importance.

The bar for retail brands and businesses has been raised higher today than ever before and at the same time, business growth and increase in profitability remain elusive for even the most forward-thinking companies. In order to compete, retailers are getting more creative in their strategies of how they plan to leverage the opportunities of both online and offline channels. While doing so, they are thinking of redefining the in-store customer experience, preparing for rising delivery expectations and merging the online and offline channels so as to function seamlessly. Consumers are connected, technology savvy and well informed. They are demanding a rapid change and retail brands are responding. A new era of shopping has begun!

Online In-Store – Shopper’s Paradise

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ETP blog online in-store

Smartphones are getting smarter and making their users more savvy shoppers. Today, customers research, review, compare, purchase products online and in-store. Research shows more than 80% shoppers use their smartphones in-store, while shopping. The customer’s mobile is the starting point of most shopping journeys. It begins with searching about the various categories of interest. The search leads to the customer browsing deeper into the product information, while in the physical store, and ready to make the purchase.

Most shoppers use their phones to ascertain pre-shopping information like searching the store location and timings, comparing prices and understanding the store or brand specific promotions and ensuring the product availability at the store. Customers who use mobiles more often buy more. This is seen across product categories like health and beauty, electronics, home care and appliances. Browsing through substantial product information and reviews surreptitiously influences customers positively and removes any doubts regarding a purchase. Sometimes, customers also buy experience enhancing accompaniments for the selected products after reading about them online.

Mobile technology in retail is impacting a broad spectrum of business functions such as campaign and promotion management, customer service and acquisition, retention and loyalty management, space planning and optimization, operational processes, demand and supply forecasting, inventory management, security management, etc. Retailers are focusing strongly on mobile connect and analytics to gain actionable customer insights out of the enterprise data. For this, mobile technology like mPOS and beacons are being introduced into the retail store to deliver superior shopping experiences.