5 New Technologies For Retailers post-Covid

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in long-term changes in consumer behavior. Retailers will have to look at the barriers that their consumers are facing in the consumer journey and start offering solutions to help them overcome such challenges. A few retailers have been quick to respond to these emerging challenges by rolling out new tech solutions creating new consumer experiences that are inclusive, immersive, interactive, intimate and intuitive. While there are multiple technologies available, here are 5 new ones that retailers can embrace during the ongoing pandemic, to bring revenues back on-track.

Visibility into Active Inventory Availability

Before going to a store, consumers not only want certainty that a particular product will be available, but also want to spend less time there. This can be enabled by omni-channel tech, wherein there’s a single view of distributed inventory across stores, in-transit & warehouses. Retailers should ideally offer an “active inventory visibility”, wherein the inventory is refreshed every few minutes and gets reflected across different touchpoints. Comparatively, a “passive inventory visibility” shows only stock-out status. While the omni-channel technology powers it in the backend, it’s the unified, seamless and integrated customer experience what counts. During the pandemic customers want to know about the product availability status & store operating hours across channels - on retailer’s website, in app, contact center or over phone to the store. Combine this with Google Local Inventory Ads and retailers can show their products inventory status in local stores to consumers searching from nearby locations. All this is helping customers avoid spending extra time in-store and leading to omnichannel revenue growth. Searches for “in-stock” grew more than 70 % globally in 28 Mar - 4 Apr, as per Google, as consumers wanted to avoid going to stores which had no stock or avoid shipping delays by ecomm.

New Delivery & Pickup Options: BOPIS, BOSSS, CUSP, BOSHH

As shoppers want to spend less time in crowded places, retailers need to offer 4 new ways to fulfill orders – BOSHH(Buy-online ship hyper-locally to home), CUSP(curbside store pick-up), BOSSS(Buy online Ship from Store to Store) and BOPIS (Buy-online pick-up in-store). BOPIS allows a physical inventory available in store to be bought remotely and picked up from store. BOSSS kicks in, when the product is not available and hence shipping happens from another store or warehouse to the chosen store for a pickup. Retailers have also tied up with local hyper-local delivery companies(BOSHH) to drop products to customer homes on same day. BOPIS orders increased by 87% in March and then jumped to 208% in April y-o-y, as per Adobe Analytics. Google report indicates that Searches for “curbside pickup” and “home delivery” have grown by 70% and over 100%, respectively over the week ending March 28, as shoppers searched info about where, how, and when they can get what they need. Retailers can now indicate curbside store pickup(CUSP) badge on their local inventory ads for products available for curbside pick-ups.

New Contactless Digital Payments

Wanting to have contactless payments & avoiding handling cash, customers across age-groups are embracing digital payments. While the younger millennials are comfortable adopting online, wallet and digital payments, the older customers need hand-holding via intuitive solutions like sending them remote payment link or peer to peer or a card swipe machine sent to their home for payment collection. To offer new "payment journeys", retailers have rolled out multiple new "fintech" digital contactless payment modes like AI-based autonomous self-checkout, electronic wallets, static or dynamic QR codes, prepaid cards, Tap & Pay NFC-based PoS terminals, contactless ATM's, Payment links via SMS & Messengers and person-to-person (P2P) payments. Digital payments which were optional and were a choice have now become a pre-requisite and a necessity. A Capgemini Research Institute report shows that 80% of Indian consumers between the age group of 56-60 years showed the highest usage of digital payment channels during the pandemic, which will only increase in coming months. Digital payments usage by Indian consumers is at 75 %, followed by China 63 % and Italy 49 %. In Europe, contactless payments have doubled and are expected to reach 3 times of pre-Covid level by end 2021, as per Oliver Wyman. Retailers also need to ensure their consumers are embracing new payment methods by partnering with brands like Visa that run digital inclusion initiatives like free courses to coach seniors in the use of digital payments.

Livestream Shopping Events or “Live Commerce”

Remember TV shopping channels from 80’s, where TV hosts talked about a product, explained its benefits and asked viewers to call in a number to place their order at a special price. Livestream shopping events is the same in a digital world, wherein an influencer offers interactive live shopping experience on an ecomm platform. The event gets promoted by the influencer to register the fans. Influencers showcase a product, its benefits, why they love it and answer queries from their trusted fans in real-time. This is followed by ‘hunger marketing’, in which a limited inventory is available for purchase with an instant discount available. During the event, viewers can add the product to an interest basket & place the order after the event from the ecomm site. As footfalls are recovering in stores, brands can either use influencers or their star sales promoters as a key opinion leader to push sales. Started in China on the Single’s Day event, shoppers find such events immersive and they have helped brands grow sales. During 2019 Single Day, over 1,000 brands did livestream shopping events and generated nearly $3 Bn on Alibaba’s Taobao Live service. While Amazon Live, a livestream shopping service is now available, Instagram Live Shopping is expected to be available soon. There are many other service-providers which enable influencer-led livestream shopping events for retailers.

Try-on AR & VR Experiences

There are many high involvement categories in which consumers want to visually see, touch & feel, try-on, discuss with friends & family and then buy. As consumers avoid stepping out, retailers will have to rely on augmented (AR) and virtual reality(VR) services to overcome this challenge in the consumer journey. Shopping has always been social and when one has to do this all alone from the home, retailers are looking at customer experience-improving technologies that will allow shoppers to visualize the products, virtually try-on, find their size & select colors and then place an order. An earlier study from Google shows that 61% of consumers would prefer to shop in stores that offer AR than over those that don’t.

Brands across categories like apparel & footwear, jewelry, makeup, furniture & electronics are using Augmented Reality to improve shopping experience. E.g., IKEA had rolled its Ikea Place, an AR app 3 years back which allowed shoppers to visualize a product within a space that is a scan of their homes, save it in favorites, share it on social to get friends’ reactions, and buy it. Similarly, footwear brand Bata has started offering foot size measuring service, while apparel retailers can offer try-on remote services. L'Oréal released the first beauty augmented reality lenses for Snap's desktop app, letting shoppers virtually try-on looks from its brands, while Jewelry brands Tanishq & Kendra Scott have introduced a virtual try-on service using augmented reality. IDC has estimated that retailers would spend $1.5 billion on developing AR and VR technologies in 2020. Post pandemic, this number is expected to rise.

The initial signs have been encouraging, as consumers are adopting these new interactive and intuitive services, thereby helping retailers recover faster. In my next post, I will share a new lot of technologies that some of futuristic retailers are trialing to overcome barriers in consumer journeys and offer intuitive & interactive experiences for their shoppers. If you have rolled out a new technology to make shopping intuitive & inclusive for consumers, do share.

#Retailers #RetailTech #Payments #Fintech #Livestream #BOPIS #Omnichannel #AR #VR #Inventory #CovidInnovations #ConsumerExperience #ContaclessPayments #Digital #Innovation