Emerging technologies and platforms will
fundamentally transform the way buyers interact with their preferred merchants
and brands. New battle lines are being drawn across various channels of retail
and radical shift in buying pattern and preferences will exhibit pronounced
shift from traditional standards.
5 trends that will contour retail in the immediate
future:
1. Brands will
increasingly represent a certain culture or ethos
Shopping, these days, are being increasingly driven
by emotions than by sense of utility or the size of the buyer’s wallet.
Millennials are gravitating towards brands that either demonstrate character or
that seem to represent their personal attitude and preferences. Changing
preferences and growing social consciousness has added newer dimensions and
challenges to how brands represent and position themselves. More often than not
brands are having to re-engineer their internal culture to align with and emanate
a certain kind of external identity.
Funnily though brands and their ambassadors are
increasingly becoming culture-coders-and-shapers, pushing consumers out of
traditional strictures and shopping parameters. The consequences will only
emerge with time, but businesses today proactively and decisively absorb and
reflect the contemporary cultural buzz across the whole plethora of media –
traditional and new age. Ostensibly more brands are influencing and shaping
people’s choice, almost setting up wire-frames and stereotypes of a collective
external cultural identity that ensures one’s integration with the modern world
out there. Yet the brand themselves cannot be absolved of their views and
responsibilities towards the emerging world views, values and cultural
transformations.
2. Quicker fulfillment & deliveries for online commerce
Most brands that have online presence, with similar
product offerings and mixes, have started appearing largely homogeneous and are
scampering to demonstrate differentiators. Recent studies indicate growing
consumer impatience while waiting for product shipments. They are unwilling to
wait more than 4 odd days now, down from nearly from a 6-day wait in 2012.
Drones may only add the ‘Wow!’ element. In order to stay sharp and deliver
distinct value to their customers, in the increasingly saturating e-commerce
ecosystem, e-commerce platforms will have to comprehensively re-work their
logistics and supply chain to ensure shorter wait for consumers.
3. Experiential merchandising on the rise
The millennials clearly are wary of the old model
of retailing where businesses focused strictly on products getting sold! The
millennials are increasingly demonstrating their affinity towards the
experience rather than the product itself that they actually purchase, in-store
or online. This trend of penchant for engaging and engrossing experiences while
shopping is here to stay and grow, and it won’t just be served by re-modelling
of stores or web pages. Technology will play a huge role in adding layers and
astonishing experiences around tradition retail models. Advent and
proliferation of social, mobile, analytics, cloud, virtual reality, IoT and AI
will encourage brands to reinvent their merchandising strategies.
4. Subscription …
subscription … subscription
Going by a McKinsey report, over 15% of internet
shoppers signed up for subscriptions in 2017 and there are no signs of that
going down anytime soon in the future. Curated products and assortments, in
keeping with one’s past buying pattern and experiences only adds to the
experiential retailing paradigm. If a consumer gets extended commercial
benefits for signing up, along with assurance of deliveries of preferred
merchandise on pre-defined frequencies, he would be more than happy to stay
hooked as a loyal shopper, for long. This simmering pattern of curated
personalized merchandised, delivered to the consumer’s door on a regular basis
has started to look like a trend that has arrived to stay and will continue to
gain momentum.
5. Omni-Channel is
here to stay
Proving detractors’ doom’s day predictions wrong,
brick-and-mortar stores are not going anywhere, anytime soon. Their roles have
transformed from just being the last mile point-of-sale counters to being an
important cog in the much larger scheme of things as far as merchandising,
interest generation, customer experience and branding is concerned. It is no
more a dichotomy, rather an emerging truth that businesses will have to adopt,
adapt to and grow across multiple channels.
Shoppers belonging to different decades have
different shopping patterns, tastes, methods and choices. Whether they’re from
the 70s, the 80s or the 90s, or whether they’re the Gen-X, Y, Z or the
Millennials or the Baby Boomers – they all have their primary preferences of
shopping methods and platforms. It has been observed that individual platforms
and shopping experience have a direct and measurable impact on their buying
pattern and decisions. The challenge for the retailers lie in being able to be
seen and be actively present across platforms. At the same time, they need to
create a framework of logistics, empowered by technology, to keep fulfillment
streamlined for business across channels. For consumers, they seek a seamless
shopping experience across various channels including but not limited to
physical stores, kiosks, shop-in-shop, b2c websites, social media,
marketplaces, etc.
The evolving retail landscape entails preparedness
for brands to be able to charm and capture the buyers’ imagination at one or
multiple channels of sale, keeping them engaged throughout the cycle of their
decision making and eventually monetising their preference at some
point-of-sale, online or brick-and-mortar. Focus on post-sale service, across
channels and quick resolution of consumer grievance, if any, are bound to hold
retailers in good stead, in the long run. Embracing these emerging trends and
the transforming pattern of preferences and leveraging rapidly evolving and
fundamentally disruptive retail technology landscape, brands and businesses can
keep their nose ahead in the blitzkrieg of upcoming brands and aspirational
retail players.
