Tag: retail store technolgy
Over the years, digital evolution has transformed the way we shop!
The lockdowns and store closures due to the unprecedented events of 2020 has moreover accelerated this evolution and mainstreamed online shopping.
Today consumers don’t just make purchases online. They compare brands, shop for deals, join communities, and engage in immersive experiences. According to Forbes, roughly 21% of all retail purchases will be online in 2023.
There’s no denying that digital technologies are changing the retail industry as we know it. The only question that remains is whether your business is ready for the future of retail.
To help you prepare, we explore the state of the retail industry and shed light on some of the most significant challenges your business faces. Most importantly, we reveal some technology trends you can leverage to compete with major players in the retail space.
Read more: Custom Software Solutions for Retail: All You Need to Know!
The State of the Retail Industry
In a 2023 retail industry outlook report, Deloitte researchers examined how labor challenges, supply chain hurdles, and market volatility would impact retail businesses in the new year.
Of the various predictions made in the report, the most notable is that retail sales growth in the U.S. – barring a recession – will be minimal due to a meager GDP growth forecast of just 0.9%.
Additionally, researchers found that nominal average weekly earnings rose by 8.3% between December 2020 and December 2022. However, real earnings decreased by approximately 5% due to inflation. In other words, consumers have less purchasing power even though their weekly earnings have nominally increased.
In light of these predictions, retail businesses must remain fluid and agile. In 2021, many retailers increased inventory volume by 11% on average to contend with supply chain volatility.
Continuing to maintain an extensive inventory with a potential recession just over the horizon would be unwise, as doing so would leave retailers with less liquidity and could hinder their ability to capitalize on emerging technology trends or shifts in consumer spending habits.
Retail Businesses Must Evolve or Fail
Like many others in the retail industry, you probably hoped 2023 would represent a continued progression toward “normalcy.” However, many of the changes affected by the global pandemic are here to stay. Modern consumers expect a more technology-centric retail experience, even if they choose to shop in-store.
In addition to adapting to the new consumer, you must also navigate the aforementioned economic challenges poised to persist throughout 2023 and beyond. To make matters worse, the quit rate of employees in the retail industry remains at about 4%, significantly higher than the national average.
While these interconnected issues seem to have created a perfect storm, it’s possible for your business not only to survive the future of retail but thrive in it. To do so, you must familiarize yourself with the latest tech trends and how they might affect your reimagined business model.
Key Tech Trends Shaping the Future of Retail
To stay relevant and competitive, we suggest you consider how adopting the following key tech trends can impact your business:
1. A Shift to Digital Goods and Services
Even if your company sells physical products, offering digital goods and services is an excellent way of differentiating your brand from retail businesses that aren’t so forward-thinking.
For instance, you might commission a development agency to create a custom mobile app for your business. You could then use this app to connect with customers, deliver digital goods (i.e., coupons or top customer badges), and nurture feelings of loyalty among your target audience.
You can take this concept further by creating a digital community that lets shoppers share how your products and goods make them feel or improve their daily lives.
2. Omnichannel Shopping Options
The shopping experience is no longer linear. Instead, customers typically interact with a brand along multiple touchpoints and channels before actually making a purchase. With this in mind, you must adopt interconnected technologies to seamlessly guide leads through each phase of the purchasing journey.
What does that look like, exactly? First and foremost, you should have a dynamic, user-friendly, mobile-optimized website in place.
You’ll also need to give consumers multiple ways of interacting with your brand, such as your website, mobile app, and brick-and-mortar store. The top brands are already doing this — your company should follow suit.
3. Social Media-Centric Campaigns
While you already have social media pages for your company, you may not be using these channels to their full potential. The most successful brands have tapped into meme culture, hashtags, influencers, and other trends that are native to social media to reinvent the customer journey.
Putting social media at the center of your marketing campaigns allows you to fuel online shopping in new ways and connect with younger audiences.
There are many ways to up your social media marketing efforts, including hosting live events, holding Q&A sessions, and interacting with followers in the comment section.
4. Automated Pricing
Automated pricing involves using software to set prices according to variables of significance to the store. Automated pricing technologies have become a valuable resource for big-box retailers in recent years. Smaller businesses are catching on, using this convenient technology to ensure that product prices are set to optimize profitability for both online and in-store products.
Implementing pricing automation solutions will reduce the workload on your staff, as they’ll no longer have to set prices manually. This will help you overcome labor shortages and improve productivity. Automated pricing tools also allow you to deliver better value to customers by running short-term sales or discounts.
Read more: How To Power Your Retail Business with Augmented Reality?
Stay Ahead of the Curve with Fingent
A mixture of in-person shopping experiences and tech-centric journeys will shape the future of retail.
While many modern consumers still like to make purchases at brick-and-mortar shops, 63% of all buying journeys start online. As such, your organization must embrace the latest retail industry technology trends to provide consumers with an experience that seamlessly transitions between channels and mediums.
To achieve such fluidity, you need a technology partner like Fingent that understands the thoroughly modern challenges retail businesses face.
Fingent provides end-to-end custom application development services for retailers. Our dynamic team can create tailor-made field sales applications, inventory management tools, omnichannel fulfillment solutions, and other digital technology resources you need to maintain your edge.
Connect with us today or submit a request for a proposal to learn more.
Mobile devices with constant connectivity, contextual access to information and products have changed consumer behavior in the past few years. In several recent surveys, it was found that an average of 42% of in-store sales is generated through online shopping searches. Thanks to technology, the distinction between online shopping and in-store shopping are disappearing as retailers implement technology solutions that enrich and satisfy the needs of modern consumers.
1. Integration with Location Based Services
A recent study conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies showed that more than half of smartphone users make use of them in stores to compare prices, find other store locations, look for discounts etc. It also showed that up to 38% of them checked for the availability of a product through an app. This shows how much influence technology has on purchase decisions made by consumers. They basically search for a product and find a store which has it before actually setting out on purchasing it.
Hence, integration with such product searches is essential in order to drive customers to your store. One of the biggest athletics brands in the world ‘Reebok’, used location-based services to drive conversions in a pop-up store in Paris by participating in a two-day long immersive fitness event in collaboration with the fitness center, LesMills. At the end of two days, there was a conversion rate of 35% or an increase of 350 purchases in 2 days.
2. Tracking Consumer Engagement Using QR Codes
QR Codes allow advertisers to provide more information to their target audiences online. Information about the company or the product allows customers to engage directly with the retailers using their smartphones. QR codes now virtually being everywhere from product brochures to restaurant menus, provide an effective way for customers to interact with the brand better.
Moreover, QR codes help facilitate transactions seamlessly that will greatly enhance the shopping experience of customers. It can push your store to embrace an omnichannel retail strategy that will prove more effective in targeting customers and converting into successful sales. Besides, it leaves you sufficient data about customers, which will help track and implement better strategies and experience.
3. Focusing on Maintaining Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is an important retention strategy for retail stores. Maintaining a consistent experience is the first step to keep up loyal customers in visiting your store than going for another. In the face of stiff competition, loyalty programs through privilege cards, incentives, rewards, email newsletter offers, etc. are effective in driving footfalls to the store. Privilege cards allow retailers to develop personalized email campaigns that provide value to the customer based on their purchase history.
4. Measure Campaign ROI Using Digital Coupons
Coupons have always been something that customers look up to. Almost 80% of them use coupons. Digital coupons have a further advantage of being available on a mobile device. Retailers can create digital coupons, that can be used in a store and provide them to customers. Since the stores are well equipped with the technology to read or scan the coupons right from the mobile device, so the customers don’t even have to take a print out.
Read : How product ordering system integration with CRM helps in purchasing?
5. Online PR with Special Events
Special events like a sale or the launch of a new product can be organized and better publicized by using an app sending push notifications. Discounts or giveaways can be offered too. Such events always help in increasing sales while mobile apps help in giving them a much wider reach among the customers. For example, the two-day event held by Reebok and LesMills mentioned earlier made use of mobile technology to transmit messages to LesMills app users, informing them about offers and discounts according to where they are.
Summing Up
Mobile apps are clearly a great way to drive consumers to your store. It brings in more convenience and offers personalized services, which by the way stands at the helm as the driving force behind increased sales and customer loyalty. The modern consumer needs a redefined shopping experience and gets ahead of conventional practices like queueing up for checkout.
Mobile technology can do just that by enabling the customer to make and complete their purchases hassle-free. Just like Reebok, there are many other brands which have made use of mobile technology to boost their in-store sales. In this age where technology is inevitable in almost every industry, it is now evident that even the retail industry is no exception.
Do you have any insights on improving the customer experience at retail stores? Tell us your insights below.
Related Reading : How a Smart Product Ordering System Helps Retailers and Wholesalers