Part 1: Allowed Out Again
So, it was with eager anticipation that I made it out to my local high street a few weeks ago (and to the delights of London a few times since…) to do some shopping.
As a dedicated and passionate shopper, I realise that shopping online gives you many benefits in many ways; browsing for something that you often can’t find quickly in turn gives you way too much wine time, and I can do it on multiple devices in multiple locations without the need to travel, park or get dressed. There are a couple of downsides – when you do find the particular item there may be an astronomical international delivery charge as it’s not locally available, or you are unsure of what size you need to you buy more than one. You can also search for and find similar products. So in order to get the one you like, you buy them all in various sizes/colours (often for a £5.95 delivery charge), all in the comfort of your own home/car/café with the knowledge you can return them, sometimes with a free returns label (a great loyalty incentive) and a courier collection option! No need to think about your carbon footprint at this stage, as you’re bound to keep most of it – aren’t you?
This need to get what I want comes from many months of my new found love of an on-demand, online shopping experience where I can, as above, nearly always get what I want within a few days, but there is a strong likelihood that I might (very highly likely) send a lot of it back because I didn’t get enough enriched product detail about the item online in the first place. Rookie error, retailers – get a decent PIM (I know one if you’re interested)!
In my perfect online shopping world, I can (almost) always get the exact product or the complete fashion look I want, thanks to the retailers that have invested in a decent PIM and the latest wizardry of Visual AI to deliver enhanced and comprehensive product data with a real time view of product availability, so it doesn’t matter whether I am shopping on a brand’s website or through any of their marketplace channels. I buy from brands I trust and buy new ones that have free and easy returns policies.
However, what I don’t get from many of my online shopping experiences is the warmth of the physical person saying hello, offering their assistance when a product is not on the rails in my chosen colour or size. I like touching items and fabrics to see if they are the types I like. I especially get pleasure out of seeing an amazing store layout and the visual merchandising that supports a range of products, many that I might not seek out when online shopping, as I tend to be looking for one specific item each time.
The other thing when I am physically shopping is that I get to take my purchases home there and then, mostly via a straightforward payment solution where I don’t have to share my personal details. 22% of people checkout online as a guest according to a recent poll of 4000 shoppers for various (mostly good) reasons.
So when I’ve done all the pleasurable bits of physical shopping, I get to choose if I want a brand ambassador vessel (bag) to show other shoppers who my retailer of choice is as I saunter back to the car (which is parked close by in a side street, paid for by a parking app – that can be easily extended if I get carried away and find too many other items I like the look of). And most importantly for my sustainability conscious brain, how caring of the retailer it is to have a sustainable/ethical choice of packaging rather than plastic wrapping/bag in more plastic bags/boxes bigger than the product itself by miles.
When I have (physically) shopped successfully, I realise I am more than likely to actually keep/wear what I have bought and post it out on social media, tell my friends where it’s from and be the brand ambassador they want me to be – because it’s taken me some actual physical effort to buy it in the first place.
However, on many of my physical shopping excursions I have wasted petrol, time and pleasure of finding what I specifically went for. If I have researched a specific item online prior to heading into town, often the product data is not detailed enough on their website/marketplace channels nor available in real0-time, so I couldn’t see if it was actually on the shelves in store, and I couldn’t get in touch with a store staff member to check stock availability and save a couple of size/colours prior to my arrival. However, as a dedicated shopaholic, I chance it and head into town just in case, with everything crossed that it’s there, in the colour and size I want with the quality as I’d hoped.
So, in my ideal world, I’d like to marry the online with the physical experience, but it requires retailers to engage and understand what their customer wants and find the right technologies to join up the experience; which in my view is personalised – welcoming customer engagement, detailed and enriched product information on the web, mobile and on channel partner/marketplace sites, real time stock knowledge, frictionless payment choices, loyalty points on an app, free/easy returns and relevant content based on my preferences (which can be set up once I join the app and then as I shop). Customer and brand loyalty across bricks and clicks comes from being treated like you’re a valued part of a retailers’ eco-system, one who will stay loyal whether you are online or in-store. You need to be able to rely on the brand to always give you something you want (but don’t actually need in my case).
Clearly, there are various hurdles and challenges for the retailer to overcome to achieve these demands – given the way people are shopping, we believe we have the right to buy and return as many items as we like, so suspending the ability to sell the stock a customer has ordered until the items are returned and made good to sell again is costly and can cause customer loyalty issues for those that see it as out-of-stock. Herein lies a good sales opportunity: ‘we don’t have your size, but we do have this similar product you might like. Or would you like us to message you when the item comes back into stock?’ are all becoming commonplace in my online world. In the good old days of bricks-and-mortar, sales people did the same in-store. I’m not so sure this won’t make a comeback soon as there is always a demand for interaction with people in-store for various reasons.
Are retailers really keen to tie these benefits up or are they relying on theatre and an experiential approach to keep their valued customers shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores?
At Retail247 we believe in developing and delivering solutions that create seamless customer journeys and increase ROI – how do we do this?
Retail247 is focused on technology and operational process transformation in the retail sector. We bring together skilled and experienced retail resources to deliver pragmatic, business engaged solutions and services. Our people have an extensive background in retail and understand the importance of delivering what is needed.
Representing the retailer, we have delivered a number of projects including RFID, ERP and Process Consultancy, supporting in-house teams with dedicated and flexible resource.
We believe in focusing on the basics of retail, allowing our technology solutions to enable rather than inhibit, and have a scalable Product Information Management (PIM) Engine – Origin which delivers a robust and scalable single view of all your product data. Enrichment, Digital Asset Management, Price Management and Channel Integrations are all standard. With our visual AI partner ViSenze we can deliver the latest industry leading produce enhancements to drive your customer experience and loyalty. Our Stock Engine – Quantum has been developed to give a real time view of all stock activity, including underpinning our RFID solution to our retail clients such as Reiss.
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