At a Glance: the Top Five Trends in…Retail
Seismic shifts are shaping the war for the customer in the retail sector.
Retail expert Richard Lim gives his fast take on the five key battlegrounds.
1. Stand and Deliver
The relentless growth of online and omnichannel has elevated the importance of order management and fulfilment. Integrated systems require flexibility to cope with evolving consumer habits and intelligent inventory management will become a prerequisite in fulfilment. Retailers possessing comprehensive property portfolios could wield a competitive advantage over pure online retailers if the infrastructure and model is executed effectively. Furthermore, consumers are increasingly demanding faster deliveries.
2. Getting Personal
Retailers who overlook customer personalisation opportunities do so at their peril. Brands need to use vast quantities of data and actively mine customer insights to implement effective strategies. Marketers are profiling shoppers’ ‘digital DNA’ from biometric data, browser history, shopping preferences/behaviour, social media posts and locational data (see our feature piece: The War for the Customer gets Personal).
3. Let’s Get physical
Previously pure online retailers are heading for the high street, bringing their digital sophistication with them. Presenting consumers with a seamless experience across all devices and channels, both on and off-line, is becoming a prerequisite to winning. As the purpose of physical stores evolves, traditional metrics such as ‘sales per square foot’ and ‘sales per employee per hour’ may give way to newer KPIs that reflect the modern consumer experience, from in-store social sharing to product dwell time measured across ‘in-store-online-on-the-go’ consumer behaviour.
4. Is Consumer Trust a Brand’s Most Valuable Asset?
91% of American Citizens are worried they’ve lost control of their data according to a Pew Research Center survey* and Apple CEO Tim Cook recently warned of a growing ‘industrial data complex†. A similar survey in Europe by Kaspersky found that almost two thirds of people don’t know where their data is being stored‡. This should make all brands sit up and think, given big data and AI lies at the epicentre of the retail revolution. Without carefully managing consumer trust, even the best, most innovative retailers will struggle to gain competitive advantage.
5. No Substitute for Experience
As the mid-market squeeze continues and consumption of everyday items increasingly relies on convenience and value, retailers delivering the best experiences will be in pole position to capture consumers. Meaningful experiences are increasingly the key differentiator for consumers: from awe-inspiring shopping malls that encourage socialising in relaxed environments to omnichannel services that seamlessly connect on and off-line consumer experiences like coffee shops that introduced ‘click and collect’ to streamline the user experience.
* http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/27/americans-complicated-feelings-about-social-media-in-an-era-of-privacy-concerns/
† https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/24/apples-tim-cook-makes-blistering-attack-on-the-data-industrial-complex/?guccounter=1
‡ https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/people-have-lost-control-of-their-personal-data-warns-kaspersky-lab-698886321.html
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