The past couple years have offered unprecedented circumstances, with a variety of challenges and opportunities. Though we are putting the pandemic behind us, some things have changed forever. We are seeing new trends as well as some that have continued from recent events. Here’s what retailers can expect in the coming year and beyond.
A Highly Competitive Technology Race
The online retail landscape is getting more competitive, particularly as smaller platforms try to gain market share from the giants like Amazon. Companies are looking for more ways to improve their customer experience and add more value. Customers will continue to try new things to get a better shopping experience, such as live streaming ecommerce, virtual reality, etc. It’s become more important that retails can offer an uninterrupted connection, real-time data transfer, and the application of 5G. In addition to offering great products and a stellar user experience, retailers should focus on well-designed processes and technology that can help them run things faster and more seamlessly.
Continued Omnichannel Importance
According to McKinsey, omnichannel is going to play a bigger role in the way that consumers shop. Companies should make every effort to collect personal customer data and then apply it to their processes to give them more value. In order to retain online buyers, retailers need to provide more customer-centric services, offers, and marketing campaigns. In an ideal world, customers will know what to expect from your brand whether they shop in your store, from their desktop, or from a device. The experience should follow the particular customer, but that’s only possible with data. If you’re not already collecting first-party data from your customers, it’s time to start.
Voice-Activated Shopping
The total value of voice-activated shopping is expected to grow from around $5 billion in 2021 to almost $20 billion in 2023. People like this approach because they can experience quick performance and get routine tasks done faster. Amazon already launched Alexa Voice Shopping to make purchasing easier by letting them add or delete items from their shopping list using voice commands. The software can then process orders through a nearby store. Other retailers like Walmart and Alibaba have developed similar options. You can compete by developing robust and highly-scalable cloud services to ensure the accessibility of this option and satisfy customers.
Supply Chain Issues are Still There
Remember how we said there are lingering effects from the pandemic? The ecommerce world is still recovering and we are all going to feel the impact. Retailers will have to get creative and build more supply chain resiliency to make it through the next couple years. Organizations should attempt to create robust and flexible partnerships with reliable suppliers, improve their supply chain processes and implement new ideas with the lowest risk possible.
More Efforts Around Data Protection
The past couple years have come with new data security and privacy regulations, but more are on the way. According to Shopify’s The Future of Commerce Trend Report, both China and Brazil have implemented new measures around protecting personal information. Furthermore, the widespread usage of IoT and the collection of terabytes of data will make protection a little more complicated. Companies should be prepared to leverage technology in order to comply with data protection acts as well as generally take care with your customer’s data. It will be more important than ever to create detailed protection policies, properly train staff on data management, and plan carefully for data breaches.