We’re excited to partner with AWS and host an insightful presentation on how to navigate shopper needs and wants with emerging in-store technologies and elevate the online and offline experience to discover new revenue streams. The joint presentation hosted in collaboration with Stephane Mermet, Retail Industry Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS) took place on Oct 14th at Shopping Today 2021. The event is one of the largest Dutch ecommerce retail events located in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Highlighting the latest in retail ecommerce technology and trends, the show brings together more than 1200 retail professionals, executives and digital transformation experts from around Europe.
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Together with our strategic partner from AWS, we shared insights on how smart in-store tech will help retailers digitize their offline and online shopping experience and more. With AWS’s Just Walk Out Technology and Mobiquity’s digital innovation that matters, retailers are able to create the right level of brand gravity towards their shoppers and change the retail landscape.
Building a competitive retail strategy focuses on all aspects of the customer journey. We specialize in creating frictionless digital experiences that drive revenue, efficiency, and customer satisfaction for both traditional and ecommerce retailers. We deploy Artificial Intelligence in the right part of the customer journey to hyper-personalize experiences and drive business impact for our retail clients. The biggest advantage for retailers using this smart technology is to gain a better understanding of the consumer’s path to purchase via new in-store data. By helping them understand what consumers buy, what their preferences are and what they leave on the shelves, these new data-driven insights will have a direct impact on the retailer's bottom line result.
We believe the future will present two types of physical stores. The first will be one swamped with digital touchpoints, where everything is measured, influenced and highly converted. The second will be a completely non-digital experience where shoppers can escape the technology of being identified and tracked. In the case of the former, we predict that a new system of ‘star’ ratings will become the norm. This would be like a VIP loyalty treatment on steroids. On this basis the more data shoppers share with the retailers, the more they buy and the greater their buying potential, the bigger the differentiated benefits will be. However, these algorithms should be handled with caution as they could enforce any type of class justice. Essentially, retailers that don’t invest in omnichannel platformization will soon struggle to compete.
Most of the retailers want to improve the shopping journey and make it as seamless as possible to increase conversion. Having the data and insights into what the shopper’s path to purchase is, understanding what they buy, what their preferences are and what they leave on the shelves drives to compelling innovations in retail that are happening right now around the world.
The Chinese Bingobox has rolled out more than 30 stores in which customers can shop seamlessly and pay via wechat and walk out. In Dubai, Carrefour City has recently launched a similar shopping experience by adopting camera vision technology. Other innovative retailers using similar technology are Zabka, the Polish largest convenience store, or Wundermart in the Netherlands that offer the same experience in their mini stores located in hotels across the country. Amazon Go was the first store to open with Just Walk Out Technology with a 2300m2 store; the first big steps to normal supermarkets has been set again by Amazon. The world’s most advanced shopping technology is here so customers never have to wait in line. The checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning. Just Walk Out Technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When the shopping is completed, customers can just leave the store. In the background the payment is done based on their credit card data receiving instantly a digital receipt once they are outside of the store. Just Walk Out technology made shopping that simple!
Installing a self check-out system and hanging up some flyers doesn’t improve retailers bottom line. Finding the customers' friction and solving it is key for a seamless and immersive digital retail experience. Mobiquity’s recent research report on the current state of seamless shopping at Dutch Food & Drug store retailers shows that the market is still in the incubation period when considering pure radical innovation. We identified 26 key elements along the customer journey ranging from pre-shopping, check-in & shopping, paying and post-shopping. Key findings are that the pre-shopping experience is somewhat OK but not sophisticated enough yet. Retailers don’t really supply the right solutions yet for the check-in & shopping elements. Next to some really poor UX we see that the post-shopping experience is only being taken care of in the right way at two retailers.
Retail innovations that drive business impact are the ones that solve customers’ real problems and delight them along the way. Using five core principles, Mobiquity can help retailers align to our digital traction framework that guides innovation processes from start to finish. We start by first considering the customers’ needs, ensuring that innovation is human-centric at its core. We then help to create processes and collaborative teams, leading retailers to only build what has value for their organization. Based on business needs, every tailored-made digital solution is carefully crafted and pushed into a next phase of scale up. Our methodology not only helps retailers innovate faster, better and cheaper but also scale up solutions at a global level in just a few months.
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