The Next Great Thing
The next great thing isn’t a piece of tech, an improved process, a branded message, or a fast-changing business model. It’s all this — at once. The fact is the next great thing is retail itself.
Retail lies at the convergence point of some of the most profound changes any business can experience. More, it plays out in front of customers and the rest of the world in real time. Retail brands that quickly harness new ideas by learning the details that make them work well become the winners.
Here are four essential and already-underway trends. Mastering their details will separate your brand from the pack — and help you create more value for your business and customers:
1
Customers’ increased use of mobile devices in stores.
Opportunities: When customers use mobile phones to “find” things, some signage costs go down. Customers will exchange valuable data about themselves and their habits — if you serve them better.
Responsibilities: Retailers should support their customers’ devices (via charging capabilities and physical security) as well as provide “invisible” support (connectivity/bandwidth, payments and data security). Making a retail space more responsive (dynamic displays, beacons) requires treating customer information with high degrees of confidentiality and care.
2
Retail spaces are becoming more dynamic. Retail floor plans are shifting (season-to-season, week-to-week, and hour-by-hour) to include more fulfillment, activities, training, making and gathering. In short, spaces are becoming more versatile with more space dedicated to doing and less to viewing — as customers favor experiences.
Opportunities: Introducing new activities (training, demonstrations, interactive engagements) adds occasions of use and brings more shoppers to the store. Rent expense can drop as new revenue-generating activities come into the store. Customers show their appreciation for what stores do for them (such as providing free meeting spaces) by talking about them online. Consider open formats that connect the inside and outside, creating a larger-feeling store and a more welcoming environment to passersby.
Responsibilities: Every facet of operations should be considered (customer safety, air quality, people security, noise control, theft reduction, lighting) carefully in multiple configurations. Make sure that wireless access is plentiful (for both associate and customer use) and that line-of-sight dependent tech won’t be out of range or stop working as configurations change. Adjust any location-dependent software (beacons, RFID, zones) as interiors change their shape and function.
3
The Internet of Things is making people smarter, work easier and retail more agile.
Opportunities: Repetitive tasks disappear. Devices can “talk” to each other and act, reducing your team’s steps and workload. Customization/personalization of services starts to feel more natural. Anticipating customers’ needs is easier, and stock-outs and supply chain issues happen less frequently.
Responsibilities: Specify enclosures that don’t interfere with signals. Make device access easy. Be alert to “invisible” processes that IoT devices depend on so that you don’t inadvertently ruin cool experiences.
4
Augmented reality and virtual reality has made a big splash and attracted much R&D funding from the entertainment sector. In retail, their most practical/ profitable applications will be in educating (customers and employees), visual merchandising, and in the personalization and customization of products.
Opportunities: Customers engage more deeply during the ‘compare’ stage of their customer journeys. The virtual versions of ready-made, ready-to-wear, or expensive inventory items are never out of stock. Presentations, product features and adjacencies adapt according to customer preferences — seamlessly and without additional customer effort.
Responsibilities: Remember that the customer’s experience starts before and ends after the “tech.” Manage the entire experience. Keep people safe by designating safe zones for using equipment that alters a customer’s sense of vision, distance, hearing or spatial reference. Make sure to supply plenty of high-speed bandwidth. Keep the AR/VR users happy.
Do This: Retail is already a fast-moving business, and things are about to get faster. So here are some things you should do:
Use customer experience design as a lens — for everything. Get agile. Build capabilities, not departments;
Also, be vigilant about return on investment bias (especially if it skews goals toward better sameness; retail success is about breakthroughs now);
Build a “study store” — one with all the bells and whistles so you can learn on-the-fly and export what works to other locations); and
Find out what customers care about most and become best at delivering that. Be willing to shift your business model, but never your values.
Mike Wittensteinis managing partner of StoryMiners. He delivered an extended presentation on the items addressed above at Chain Store Age’s SPECS 2017 conference.