There are no limits where our fantasy can bring us imagining the future of shopping. No, offline retail stores won't disappear even in 10 years. Let's imaging what can happen to retail stores in 2020.
Today smart consumer technologies, like AI-powered personal assistants, different connected wearable, smart gadgets, etc, became a significant part of our life. We can observe the integration of technologies into different offline industries, that brings the unforgettable customer experience. The same apples to traditional shopping concept.
In order to get competitive advantages offline classic retail will start changing it the concept becoming more customer oriented. They will look more like a beautiful large showroom full of sensors and other tech devices.
If we are speaking about the fast-moving consumer goods network, we can expect increasing personalization of customer experience, such as:
Personalized marketing. Now retailers can understand their audience interests and customers behavior. For example, to help retailers to personalize customer message, advertising and promotions, GeoCTRL shows who are their clients, what are they interested in and even more so, using machine-learning algorithms, GeoCTRL can predict customers behavior on sunny or rainy days.
Targeted advertising. No need to have a degree to start advertise your brand. Google DV360 provides tonnes of opportunities to run your ads, but even more so, Adello gives the chance to go online even without any specific knowledge of how to set up the campaigns. 60 seconds and your ad is online on mobiles!
Detailed information. Customers will be able to read detailed information about a product or brand that appears in a consumer's smartphone as soon as they scan the bar code of the product. The information should not be generalized, but adapted to the needs of a particular user: the composition, level of environmental friendliness of the product, history of price changes, etc. There are already several apps on the market that can show you the story and rating of beauty products.
Customers retention. How to make the customers continue visiting your store? Easy, scream louder about your promotions 😉 Be present on such platforms like Poinz, to share your news, promotions and communicate your benefits with the new and existing clients.
Product rating. Soon we might see promotional counters or entire departments with products whose rating is at least 4 stars, according to users of the online store.
Customer experience. Order delivery within 30 minutes for customers within a radius of ~3 km from the point of sale. One of the solutions in Europe is Annanow which already can offer retailers fast delivery services.
As for shopping malls, they will become full-fledged community spaces, rather than just supporting the work of escalators to move customers between shops and restaurants as they are now.
The public space will become more and more functional and enjoyable for customers, and hopefully will not be limited to hard seats for a 3-minute rest.
If you look further into the future of retails, then the London concept of Westfield 2028 might be interesting for you, as it shows the project of a shopping center to be implemented over the next 10 years:
The future of malls includes walkways powered by AI, retina-recognition purchasing and restrooms that offer health diagnosis.
Are you ready to deliver new customer experience before your competitors?
