Historically, shopping can loosely be described as impulsive. Decide you want something, go out and buy it, immediate gratification. In the dark days before on-line shopping, we were used to getting things the same day and at our convenience.
Today, consumer expectation has taken a subtle shift. Although purchasing fundamentally remains a mix of the considered and the impulsive we are, in the majority of cases, prepared to wait until tomorrow to receive our goods. The consumer has been ‘trained’ that next day delivery is actually a premium service and indeed is often charged more for the privilege.
This is where retailers with existing store estates can leverage real time, same day, click and collect. Implementing an infrastructure where stock and sales are updated in near real time, supporting this by real time order orchestration and a single view of a single stock pool are pre-requisites when it comes to servicing the consumers of tomorrow.
I just find it interesting that in a world where we have all become more impatient, tomorrow has actually become acceptable.
