The Marketing Journal
  • About
  • Interviews
  • Articles
  • Videos
  • Book Reviews
  • Views
  • Subscribe
“Intelligent Retail: The Future of Shopping Experience Design” – Karl Hellman and Mark Blessington

“Intelligent Retail: The Future of Shopping Experience Design” – Karl Hellman and Mark Blessington

October 30, 2018

What do iconic brands like Bonobos, Kate Spade, Michael Kors, Frank + Oak, Saks Fifth Avenue have in common?

They all are transforming the retail experience by empowering and enabling their greatest asset: store associates.

Wait, you ask, weren’t store associates going to be replaced by robots, self-service and AI?

Yes, perhaps, if you’re selling a commodity, but not if you are interested in building deep relationships with your customers, not if you subscribe to the idea of intelligent retail.

Intelligent Retail: The Augmented Shopping Experience

The shopping experience is a human story. It is a celebration of an interaction that we, as social animals, have enjoyed since the beginnings of history.

Shopping is an exchange, a conversation. It involves value and values: the perceived value of a product or service as it is experienced through the use of the product or service, and the ethical values of a brand – the brand’s cultural narrative.

The 2018 Consumer Trends Report reveals the importance of integrating the multichannel experience. “Buy Online, Pickup In-Store” (BOPIS) is now considered a mainstream offering, with shoppers widely recognizing that BOPIS offers not only free order fulfillment, but also a degree of flexibility and control not available via home delivery. The ability to inspect items in the store before taking them home is the key BOPIS benefit. Its importance grew the most year over year—suggesting that the tactile experience offered by bricks and mortar are increasingly important to customers, and consequently a highly valuable component of a brand’s value.

Substantiating this finding is shoppers’ increasing willingness to engage store associates for assistance with finding items; 57% of survey respondents said they’ve done so, an 19% increase from 2017. More than two-thirds of respondents said they expected those associates to have access to their order histories, suggesting expectations are high for knowledgeable interactions that draw on shoppers’ past interactions across touchpoints.

For high-end retail, the knowledgeable store associate is viewed as both a guide and advisor—making recommendations that fit the personal aspirations of the individual customer.

Intelligent retail is what customers want.  This is not about AI replacing human interaction, but rather using technology to improve the interaction between the store associate and the customer.  AI and machine-learning are enablers for designing seamless, branded experiences connecting all customer touch points online and in-store. During a customer interaction, retailers can connect their online stores with offline to offer an endless aisle of products if a desired item is out of stock at the store.


INTELLIGENT RETAIL: TECHNOLOGY AUGMENTS THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

The Engine of Intimacy

The engine that drives customer intimacy is still the sales associate, but now, the associate is served by an intelligent agent, a retail solution that includes:

  • Clienteling: Give associates access to customer preferences and history to reach out to customers with personalized messages—email, text or social media—to elevate service and build strong relationships
  • Assisted Selling: Turn store associates into storytellers, style guides, and product experts with access to the entire product catalog from anywhere in the store.

  • Checkout: Enable associates to sell, checkout and collect payments from anywhere in the store, with an mPOS solution.

  • Runner: Enable associates on the sales floor to collaborate with other store workers and runners to retrieve products and deliver a seamless customer experience.

  • Fulfillment: Deliver “buy online, pick up in-store” (BOPIS) services and empower associates to pick and pack orders and manage the fulfillment of online orders in stores.

  • Store Communications: Streamline communications and training of workers by sending announcements and content to stores and sharing documents.

Designing Branded Experiences

Emotional intelligence is an added factor to drive successful customer interactions.

A branded “conversation” might include the following steps:

  • Open the discussion
  • Clarifies details
  • Develops customer ideas
  • Creates consensus on actions to take
  • Maintains or enhances customer esteem
  • Listens with empathy
  • Encourages participation
  • Supports the right decision from the customer’s point-of-view

Signature experiences can be designed around the brand dimensions and personality of a specific brand or sub-brand. This is part of the reason for the success of specialty retail.

Impact on the Bottom Line

The metrics for intelligent retail as described above are encouraging. Here is an example of business impact, as reported by Tulip, a retail clienteling vendor:

  • Increased Store Sales
    +2%-10%
  • Increased Repeat Purchases
    +5%-20%
  • Increased Order Sizes
    +5%-15%
  • Increased Customer Satisfaction
    +10%-30%

It’s time to double down on store investments. That is, after all, what differentiates brick-and-mortar retailers from Amazon.

Dr. Karl Hellman is Managing Director of Consentric Marketing. Karl is the author of The Customer Learning Curve (with Ardis Burst, 2004) and his clients include best-in-class companies such as JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, UPS, and Coca Cola.

Mark Blessington is a Partner at Consentric Marketing. He has three decades of experience in marketing and sales consulting to many of the world’s largest corporations, and is the author of over 40 articles and four books.

Related Posts

“The Big Brand Lie: How Categories Make Brands & Why Brand Marketers Never Believe It” – Eddie Yoon,  Nicolas Cole,  Christopher Lochhead

Analytics /

“The Big Brand Lie: How Categories Make Brands & Why Brand Marketers Never Believe It” – Eddie Yoon, Nicolas Cole, Christopher Lochhead

“Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap” – James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr

B2C Marketing /

“Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap” – James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr

“How the US military used magazines to target ‘vulnerable’ groups with recruiting ads” – Jeremiah Favara

Branding /

“How the US military used magazines to target ‘vulnerable’ groups with recruiting ads” – Jeremiah Favara

‹ “Beyond the Triple Bottom Line” – An Interview with John Elkington › “Algorithms, Democracy, and Capitalism” – An Interview with Scott Galloway
A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Recent Posts

  • “Jobs-to-be-Done for Government” – Anthony Ulwick
  • “The Power of Superconsumers” – Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, & Katrina Kirsch
  • “Zoom Out/Zoom In – Making It Personal” – John Hagel
  • “Regeneration or Extinction?” – a discussion with Philip Kotler, Christian Sarkar, and Enrico Foglia
  • “Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap” – James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr
  • “The allure of the ad-lib: New research identifies why people prefer spontaneity in entertainment” – Jacqueline Rifkin and Katherine Du
  • “What is ‘ethical AI’ and how can companies achieve it?” by Dennis Hirsch and Piers Norris Turner

Categories

  • Advertising
  • AI
  • Analytics
  • B2B Marketing
  • B2C Marketing
  • Big Data
  • Book Reviews
  • Brand Activism
  • Branding
  • Category Design
  • Community
  • Content Marketing
  • COVID-19
  • Creativity
  • Customer Culture
  • Customer Engagement
  • Customer Experience
  • Dark Marketing
  • Decision Making
  • Design
  • Digital Marketing
  • Ecosystems & Platforms
  • Ethics
  • Innovation
  • Internet of Things
  • Jobs-to-be-Done
  • Leadership
  • Manipulation
  • Marketing Technology
  • Markets & Segmentation
  • Meaning
  • Metrics & Outcomes
  • Millennials
  • Mobile Marketing
  • Non Profit Marketing
  • Organizational Alignment
  • Peace Marketing
  • Privacy
  • Product Marketing
  • Regeneration
  • Regenerative Marketing
  • Research
  • Retail
  • Risk & Reputation
  • Sales
  • Services Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Strategy & Business Models
  • Sustainability
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos

Archives

  • September 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • October 2022
  • August 2022
  • May 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016

Back to Top

© 2016-19 The Marketing Journal and the individual author(s). All Rights Reserved
Produced by: Double Loop Marketing LLC
By using this site, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to the use of cookies, our privacy policy, and our terms of use.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy