Mega trend: Seamless Commerce, a holistic way to interpret retail.
A Mega-trend is a global, sustained and macro economic forces that impact several aspects of the society at the same time: business, economy, the behaviour of the society, cultures and the way individuals live. Mega-trends develop over a longer period and step by step, define our future and the future of our world, having a big impact on the pace of change itself.
If you think about your daily life you will immediately identify several aspects impacted by technological developments that have changed over the years. In the era wherefrom our phones we can virtually carry out every aspect of what we do or need, as consumers we expect to have multiple touchpoints, optimized among them, to contact our favourite brand.
The border between online and offline are progressively disappearing and with the overlapping of other macro trends such as hyper-personalization with dynamic pricing, personal payments methods and feedback channel for questions and complaints via social media available 24/7; retailers and tech companies are working on a holistic way to interpret the shopping experience. The desire is to create an experience where the time between the initial contact and the completion of the sale is minimized by speed shopping.
The future of seamless commerce is here and a customer shopping experience could have the following steps: you browse the website of your favourite clothing brand and you see several items you like, instead of buying online you pin them to your profile and once that you arrive at the shop the sales assistant has already prepared everything you chose. In the fitting room, you try the items on but soon realize that one shirt would look better one size bigger, from the mirror you can choose the model you’d like to try on the sales advisor bring it in for you. You make your decision and everything is packed for you, you simply walk out of the store. Immediately you receive a message with the receipt of your payment as your data was already stored. Meanwhile, in the store, the sales assistant is checking the stock as the system is automatically updated upon every purchase.
Sounds very smooth right? Seeing is believing, look how Microsoft is imagining the future (not so far away) of retail.
Technology is putting retail upside down, the point of sale is changing, flagship stores are not the main point of attraction. Brands are implementing a large number of creative and flexible solutions where it is possible to experiment new features: pop-up stores are a great opportunity to try out how new technologies can fit the DNA of your company. You could try interactive mirrors, or a staffless event taking inspiration from the latest supermarkets opened by Amazon in New York City across the U.S.A.
When planning your next pop-up think about the way you can implement it into a seamless shopping experience connecting it to your online or offline store or to other aspects of your company you would like to enhance.
