......How You Can Deploy Them

“After I retired, it seemed to me that there was a whole new world out there, which was a digital world driven by a marketplace, basically, which had a huge potential driven by handheld devices, which would one day become the virtual retail store of India.” -  Ratan Tata, Chairman Tata Group (rtd).

Traditional retail business has changed; this change is permanently unending. And technology is the driver of these tsunami disruptive changes. We, as retailers are experiencing these changes daily, and we can’t afford the luxury of complacency. There are many technological components propelling these changes. They include but are not

limited to never-ending volatilities and complexities in mobile technology, big data and the application of data analytics tools, cloud computing, and a sea change of other technology-abled revolution of consumer buying habits. Do these technologies threaten the traditional brick-and-mortar store? The answer is a definite no! Except of course, you have no online presence. In his book, The Wounded Don’t Cry, Quentin Reynolds famously said, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” As a retail brick-and-mortar store retailer, you need to join the technology revolution by having a vibrant presence in the online marketplace. You need this so you can bridge the gap between your offline traditional physical store and the online retailers. Teens and millennials spend a disproportionate amount of their shopping time browsing and shopping online than their baby-boomer and seniors’ counterparts. Yet over 80 percent of actually buying is still done in physical brick-and-mortar retail stores by demographic segments. The largest consumer group is the millennial population segment, who spend more time on the Internet, searching for products, reading product reviews, but still finding the physical location of stores to either buy or click-and-collect at physical retail locations. If you have no online presence, you are not visible to the millennial population segment. And the millennial population is so huge and their spending capacity so large that you neglect them at your own business peril.

And So, What Should You Do?

Embrace technology. Smart retailers are omnichannel retailers. Omnichannel retailers are not necessarily multi-chain, multinational retailers. Many are single independents. They combine their physical stores’ presence with a vibrant online or e-commerce shopping wed presence. According to Forrester Research, a US-based independent technology and market research organization, Webrooming, a shopping behavior where product research and buying decision is made online but actual purchase is done in physical stores, accounts for over 40 percent of all e-commerce transactions. In 2017, for instance, about $380 billion spent online by e-commerce retailers, $1.8 billion was spent on webrooming. A survey conducted by ComScore, an American media measurement and analytics company, found that over 44 percent of respondents preferred to shop online but pick up at a physical store. Also, 62 percent of respondents who bought online would prefer to return products in-store, rather than return the same purchases online. When your customers return items online, that particular sales transactions dies and is ended for all intents and purposes. However, when same items are purchased online but turned to your physical store, the opportunity for face-to-face interaction may result from you with a chance for exchange of returned items of a replacement on account of fit, size, color or some other reasons, and it also presents you with an opportunity for upselling and cross-selling to the same customer. You should exploit the same upselling and cross-selling transaction opportunities with your webrooming customers. For best practice, you will need to enhance your customer experience in all sales funnels touch points. Make your online site a truly functioning e-commerce site that is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Present your customers with online product search, shopping and payment gateway experience across all channels that is seamless with your physical retail store experience. All said and done, you must transition to an omnichannel retailing and ensure that your online and offline formats are talking to one another effortlessly. Incorporate as many as is customizable the bells-and-whistles of e-commerce that will make you stand out from the crowd.

Transition to an Omnichannel Retailer Now

As consumers continue to use technology in their shopping and buying journey, where Internet-based, mobile-enabled digital technologies continue to erode traditional pure-play retail brick-and-mortar businesses, to defend your retail tuff and expand your customer reach and coverage, to not only survive as a retail brick-and-mortar store but to thrive in the retail industry, there is no better time than now to transit from a pure-play retail brick-and-mortar store to a multi-channel or omnichannel retailer. Omnichannel retailing is a retail business format where you seamlessly combine online shopping experience from desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones with the brick-and-mortar retail business experience designed to meet the needs of your retail segment. You must design a harmonious integration of your supply chain and logistics management, online store navigation, payment gateway, products availability, promotions, advertisements, delivery options with your physical store activities. Your customers should be able to reach and interact with you both online and at your physical store about their problems and concerns by web chat, email, phone, and social media. Your omnichannel retail design must be able to share data effortlessly both offline and online. Your customers must have the option of browsing and buying online and have their order delivered where they choose. Your product assortments and availability, pricing, sales promotions, and advertisement must sync. All said, your customers must be afforded a seamless, hassle-free positive experience, whichever option they choose and wherever they are. Your key success factor is the design of your logistics and supply chain management. There must be no silos between activities in your online store and the same activities at your physical store. Both store formats (online and offline) must constantly be talking with each other, and easily accessible by all devices.

Competing on Analytics

Today’s retail business environment is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. No matter how successful your retail business or format is, you can’t afford to be complacent. Complacency is your biggest enemy. You must stay alert and agile. Pay attention to the footsteps of the technology behind you. Pay attention to emerging technologies ahead, even if they do not directly impact your retail business format for now. It is too easy for today’s winners to become tomorrow’s also-rans, and then case-studies. The retail business generates lots of data. Collect and analyze this data. Remove the guesswork from your retail business. Minimize intuition to the barest minimum. Use customer transaction data for your planning activities. What’s the right promotion for your brand? What product assortments should your carry and support? What’s the demographics and psychographics of your retail environment? How are they changing? What periods are the peak transaction days and hours for your business?

To answer these and other questions you may have, there are a number of digital technologies that can help you generate answers.

They include but are not limited to:

1. Retail store traffic visitor counters:sensor-enabled foot traffic people counter is a simple technology that can help you determine what the traffic flow into your store is like. When deployed, data is available to help you deploy actionable insights that are based on your in-store traffic ebbs and flow. With this information, you can adjust your staffing such that your best staff are available during the peak periods of your store visits. By addressing the traffic queue with adequate staffing during your peak period, this should translate into a higher conversion rate, when you deploy more open counters at each peak period. Also, you can make much more effective promotions and window merchandising tactics based on data collected from your traffic visitor counters.

1. Mobile wi-fi and Bluetooth low energy sensor: smartphones emit intermittent wi-fi signals, whether or not they are turned on or off, and whether or not they are connected to your retail store’s wi-fi network. Emitted wi-fi signals or blips search for nearby internet connections. These blips have identification signatures or markers. Your retail store Internet wi-fi network can serve as a robust medium for customer data. It cannot individually identify each customer nor access their personal data, but it can tell who is a first-time visitor and who is a repeat visitor. It can tell when a visitor exits your store and returns later. It can tell the dwell time of your in-store visitors, and the store paths are taken. It can be used for managing your loyalty program. It can be used as an in-site promotion communicator. With wi-fi networks, long-range lock-on to smartphone devices is an advantage as the line of sight is not a constraint.

1. Bluetooth low energy sensor: Bluetooth Low Energy (or Blue LE) is a low-energy modification of the classic Bluetooth device. It has multiple applications in the healthcare, sports, fitness, and Internet connectivity industry. It is also an integrated component of beacon technology. It has a wider range than smart video cameras but a narrower range than regular wi-fi access points. In retail store application, Bluetooth LE technology is used for proximity-based messaging, shopper path analysis, employee productivity analysis, and it has the advantage of being able to segregate your shopper activity from those of your staff. It is a relatively cheap technology that can perform a similar task as that performed by Wi-Fi sensors deployed in a retail store.

1. POS transaction generated data: your POS is your best source of customer transaction data. Using analytics software, the data from your POS can tell you the products assortments that generate more sales, what assortments are bought together, the peak periods of each assortment purchase, whether cash, credit or debit card was used in effecting payment. Armed with these analytics data, you can re-configure your stock keeping units (SKUs) in line with your customer patronage.

There are a number of retail store analytics vendors. What you desire to measure, will, in turn, determine who can best serve your needs. Some of them include but are not limited to the following:

• gozio.comfor in-store navigation tracking
• measurence.com retail store analytics
• brickstream.com for 3-D tracking
• vizio7.com for augmented, visual reality, and 3-D mapping

The vendor(s) you choose should depend on what you desire to achieve and what strategy is suitable for your customer segment. Choose a vendor that can provide you with holistic analytics data and the tools to interpret them. We recommend that you collect the following data as they provide easily actionable insights:

• In-store dwell time: if the average in-store dwell time for your visitors is short, consider what may be wrong with your product assortment and in-store atmospherics like music, lighting, scent, and the shop floor staff attitude to your visitors.
• Aisle dwell time: if this is high for some aisles, consider locating your high margin product assortments there, low-profit-margin stock at aisles with low dwell time. Consider if the lighting and other store atmospherics are responsible for low dwell time at locations with low visitor dwell time.
• Checkout counters: If the time spent at checkout lines are high, note the peak time when this is high and consider opening up more checkout counters during such periods.

In today’s retail environment, to defend your tuff, you must employ technology in its varied form. You must transit to an omnichannel retailer, as a consequence of the fact that Teens, Millennial and Generation Y constitute the greater shopping demographics and their primary media of choice are technology-enabled devices. It is equally important that you stay abreast of technology so you can stay relevant in the market place.