Omnichannel research shows changing role of physical stores

Research was carried out across 200 retailers (by Censuswide) and 2,000 UK consumers.

“It’s clear from our report that the retail industry is still in its infancy of digital transformation, but I'm buoyed by the progress that has been made in such a short period of time since stores reopened to the public,” says Olga Kotsur, CEO and Co-Founder, Mercaux.

“The role of the store has changed – it is no longer perceived as a simple sales channel, but instead a multi-purpose omnichannel centre.”

“What the findings confirm for me is that retailers have been busy setting the foundations of digital success – particularly during the past 18 months – by upgrading their existing and implementing new age backend systems, such as OMS.”

“They now find themselves at the next stage, on the very cusp of a digital transformation wave, finally allowing us to achieve our connected omnichannel retail aspirations. Exciting times ahead!”

Capturing the preferences and behaviours of customers in-store (33% overall but rising to 47% amongst CEOs) is now considered by retailers to be almost as important as selling products (35%).

The only other response that recorded over 30% importance across all respondents was “using a store as a customer relationship centre”.

When asked where physical retail sits in terms of priority lists across all channels, 73% of respondents said it was a high or top priority. This was a consistent response across all retailers, regardless of size (from those with 50 stores to those with 1,000 plus).

More than half also said that post-pandemic, their in-store revenues had rebounded to more than 60% of total, which would lead to high importance being given to future store investments.

In terms of business infrastructure, the report revealed that 38% of the retailers surveyed felt that their systems were too old to support in-store digital transformation.

Of those that did not know what is needed to deploy in-store technologies, the IT respondents were highest, with 30% not knowing what it took to roll-out.

The top in-store digital transformation technology launched by retail respondents was mobile PoS (20%) – something that more than half of the consumers surveyed were keen to see deployed to help speed up their shopping experience.

In second place was clienteling solutions – of which 19% have already deployed, 25% were in the process of currently implementing and 28% were planning on doing so moving forwards.

In third place was making and accepting appointments in-store (for styling advice etc)– of which 16% had already deployed.

The next solutions on the cusp of being rolled out to stores are omnichannel and self-service consumer apps (31%) and assisted selling and self-service kiosks following closely behind (28%).

Kotsur concludes: “Retailers need to start looking at the solutions which are in the planning stage for their competitors, as they are likely to become more popular in the next six months.”

“They also need to listen to consumers’ wants and desires - our findings indicate that over two thirds would like retail staff to use inventory tools, and more than half were interested in using digital fitting rooms.”

“Consumer interest and demand for a more integrated shopping experience is here. Retailers need to meet this need and quickly - very few can afford to wait for lengthy back-end systems to be built before embarking on digital transformation projects.”

“Hesitating could be considerably damaging to their growth potential.”