By incorporating some of these points into the overall design of your promotions you will be able to effectively bond with your customers in a way that leaves a lasting and meaningful impression of you and your business on them.
The influence of mobile technology on retail in this century has been truly astounding. By 2003, 95 million people around the globe made a payment via their mobile device. By 2015, there were 500 million users making 50 billion transactions for a total volume of 610 billion USD. With mobile wallet growth on the rise, could it be the next subset of mobile commerce to reap the benefits of a mobile hungry populace? Over the last five years, m-commerce has enjoyed a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) that is showing little sign of slowing down. If brick and mortar retail is still king, what will it take to bring mobile wallet adoption out of the hands of early adopters and into the hearts and minds of shoppers worldwide?
Brands constantly look for new channels to engage with consumers and mobile wallets are often underutilized—yet promising—tools that can do just that. People use physical wallets to hold their rewards cards, gift cards and more—and expect the same capabilities from their mobile wallets.
But until a mobile wallet can provide the same functionality as a physical one, there’s no reason for consumers to leave their leather billfold at home. Mobile wallets that don’t bridge this gap are less likely to be used to their full potential because they don’t provide consumers with added value that eliminates the need for a physical wallet—causing brands to miss out on engagement opportunities.
Customer loyalty is no longer the powerhouse that it once was. In the digital age, consumers expect top-notch customer service, and the ability to buy what they want, anywhere, and anytime, through various channels, offline and online. With brick-and-mortar stores seeing fewer and fewer purchases while online sales continue to enjoy meteoric rises, retailers must face the music, and it’s a whole new dance card.
Around 80% of consumers use mobile phones inside a physical store to check product reviews, according to a recent study by website design firm Outerbox, underlining the advent of the omnichannel shopping era.
Combine this with the growing spending power of the notoriously choosy Millennial generation and it is easy to see why some commentators have branded the concept of customer loyalty as dead.
It is clear from the study that consumers want speed, convenience and timely communication for a better BOPIS experience. Currently, a small portion of total purchases are completed through click and collect, but it is growing in use, with 49% of Americans trying it for the first time in 2016.
Retailers can benefit from creating a winning in-store experience — 59% of buyers expect to purchase additional items at least some of the time. Retailers should explore if they can provide incentives to convert the 41% of customers who are not likely to purchase additional items.
It is interesting to note that 77% of shoppers did not want to be dragged all the way to the back of the store to pick up their items. Businesses should balance their financial motives to upsell patrons entering their stores to pick up their items with the speed and convenience that they expect.
Retailers should focus on creating a winning in-store experience by enabling what matters most to click and collect consumers: speed, convenience and timely communication.
The store of the future will become the most powerful media channel available to a brand, offering customer experiences that are the most profitable product a retailer can sell. But to get there, retail as we know it must die.
That the retail world has changed very quickly and fundamentally in the last several years is no longer up for debate. The digital age has spawned customers that are incredibly knowledgeable about — and always connect to — commerce. The number of potential touchpoints a retailer has with consumers has increased exponentially over the past decade — and the dawn of the era of the connected device is set to expand it even further.
The good news for payments and commerce players is that this evolution has been an excellent catalyst for innovation and improvement — particularly in the pursuit of a better customer experience. The more challenging news is that delivering on that potential is a lot of work and typically requires a series of separate but connected efforts to produce one unified experience.
“Traditional brick-and-mortar merchants are realizing they need both a strong digital and social presence,” POPcodes CEO Gregg Aamoth told PYMNTS in a recent conversation.
BOSTON – Jan. 25, 2017 – PRLog — POPcodes, a startup focused on improving consumer, merchant and acquirer experience, has been asked to participate in Catapult 2017 at the Northeast Acquirers Association conference in Boston between January 31st and February 3rd.
Gregg Aamoth, CEO and Co-Founder of omnichannel solution provider POPcodes and a former VP of Customer Marketing Systems and Privacy at Macy’s, is a heavy proponent of the buy online, pickup in-store trend and believes this model creates the most seamless shopping experience across all channels. The model also is known to strip down the hassle of pricing, as 86% of consumers who order products online and pick them up in the store want to avoid shipping fees, according to a POPcodes survey.
In the below Q&A, Aamoth details the buy online, in-store pickup process, and explains why it provides an added convenience that other delivery models do not.