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Retail brands must focus on four key regions in 2016 that comprise ongoing integration of instore and online customer encounters, according to the latest Future of Retail study from Walker Sands.
The analysis, which revealed a general plateauing of retail action this season, surveyed 1,400 consumers in the US and discovered that seven of these were prepared to opt into instore monitoring and mobile push notifications when retailers correctly incentivised them to do so. Just 6 percent of customers had already used beacons.
In addition, the marketing chances of beacon technology in-store have to be grasped by several retailers with just a third of them having implemented it in 2014.
Nevertheless retailers like Macy’s and Target in the united states are rolling their beta beacon programmes — a move that’s expected to stimulate the market further.
VR and eCommerce
The analysis also notes the opportunity of digital reality eCommerce — vCommerce — that is says it entering the early adoption phase and may represent the upcoming big integration region for instore and online shopping experiences.
Over half of consumers think virtual reality eCommerce will affect their buying choices and 62 percent are interested in attempting VR shopping.
The report also emphasized the opportunities of luxury eCommerce which saw a dramatic spike in 2015 with the amount of consumers buying a luxury thing online quadrupling from 2014.
Supply chain spend
Retailers will also be focusing and investing more in the distribution chain as delivery and shipping become key trigger points for purchase for customers. Nearly a third (29%) of capital expenditure annually moved towards alternatives such as transportation and logistics, order management, stock visibility and returns management.
The study demonstrated that although only 9% of consumers have used same-day delivery in the past year nearly half (49 percent) stated the choice of same-day delivery would make them shop more frequently online if it was more widely offered.
40% of consumers also said they thought they’d get their initial drone-delivered bundle within a couple of decades or less.
One area where retail brands are discovering consumers are less hesitant to adopt is mobile payments that has seen flat adoption within the year with roughly a third of customers having used such applications.
But,report indicates that when cellular payments do take off early adopter retailers can slip a lead.
