What will it be like to shop ten years from now? Thanks to emerging technologies, the shopping experience will become even more personalised – streamlining online and offline touchpoints and automating many customer journey service steps. This blend of physical and digital – i.e., phygital – involves combining the three I’s: immersion (making your customer part of the experience), Immediacy, which means your customer can choose the way you fulfill their order, and interaction; your customer can touch, feel, and engage with your products.
Physical stores still play a vital role in the retail landscape. We visit physical stores because we value being able to touch and feel products. We can get a product immediately and don’t have to pay shipping fees. Furthermore, we like the experience visiting a store in real life gives us. And 30% to 40% of the customers that order products online, and pick them up in a physical store, buy additional items when they enter the store. In the future, retailers will have to embrace an approach in which all channels offer a unified customer experience – and the physical store will be a piece of this puzzle – where the shopper moves effortlessly between different modes of interacting with a brand.
The current shopping experience follows four different paths. These four shopping experiences (phygital building blocks) will blend in various ways to create the future of retail shopping:
The peak event
The peak event equals an incredible and exciting experience whose primary objective is building brand awareness and a target audience relationship, whereas conversion is secondary. An example is an interactive skateboard game in a Metaverse environment, a novel reading at the local bookstore, or a tai chi class in a sports shop.
The tailoring service
Do you sometimes feel you have a hard time making a purchase decision? Then the tailor service decision is something for you. Here, knowledgeable staff and new technologies like smart virtual fitting will support you in making the right decision.
Just walk out/one-click store
Through designing smooth processes, online shopping today is easy – with just a few clicks, you can purchase almost anything. Regarding physical stores, Amazon was the first to launch “just-walk-out” technology in the US. They have brought the concept to Europe with hundreds of stores in the UK. French chain Carrefour and many other actors are following with shops that minimise customer effort.
The social feed
Have you ever bought anything while being on Instagram and inspired by a post?
This is an example of the social feed experience – individualised, shoppable inspiration. Marketing Factory’s Social Commerce Report shows a consumer desire for this experience.
Are you curious to know more about Nexer and retail in general? Read more about the future of retail and how Nexer can help you connect all your retail systems into one “Digital Ecosystem for Retail”?
