Lecture 2 Flashcards
Extended Reality / Virtual Augmented Reality
Offers retailers several ways to enhance customer experience.
Provide additional information for customers when browsing for products.
Customers share their virtual reality shopping experience with others.
Increase customer engagement rate
Virtual try ons and showrooms are gaining popularity
Provide a more immersive customer experience using 3D, makes shopping fun, allowing online customers to have in store like experiences that can entertain, engage, educate and convert lookers into buyers.
Predictive Analytics (Big Data)
Improve efficiencies and reduce costs of supply chain.
Helps personalize customer experience at all stages of decision-making process.
Spotting tendencies and improving replenishment strategies
Customer preferences
Patterns in customer behaviour
These can help ignite ideas on how to boost sales, decrease cart abandonment and improve conversion rate.
Micro-Moments
Finding or anticipating what customers need “in the moment”
Help businesses to capture moments
Have a powerful advantage
Recommendation Engines
Funnel options to customers during their shopping journey
More data in algorithms, better recommendations
Benefit from higher cart sales and improved customer satisfaction.
Facial Recognition Technology
Help retailers battle shoplifting and retail crimes
Bringing personalized shopping experience to brick and motar store
Once recognized, store staff can better respond to unique needs.
Robotic Store Assistants
Manage stock data in real-time
Accurate data help to make better predictions and forecasting that help improve inventory control.
Good inventory management reduces waste and spoilage
Can also help customers find what they are looking for and answer questions, can email coupons.
E.g. Hema Store by Alibaba
Customer Chat Bots
Reducing calls as messaging has become the preferred customer service channel.
AI bots can improve customer journey pre and post-sales, lowering cart abandonment and helping customers solve problems after sales without human intervention.
Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart equipment
Sensor embedded shelves that track inventory across facilities, updating real-life inventory.
Workers can now pick up orders more efficiently as it is easier to monitor inventory, automate re-ordering and keeping track of deliveries.
Order Fulfillment Automation
Autonomous Robots (AMR) fulfil customer orders. E.g. Amazon Increasing speed and flexibility of operations reducing order processing time for labour-intensive tasks. Warehouses also struggle to find enough human labour to keep up with demand, hence automated systems are attractive.
5G Network
Prolonged Battery Life due to low energy consumption of 5G.
Blockchain Technology
Protects data and information from being edited or manipulated by hackers.
Blockchain technology offers Retail four main benefits; Reduced Costs, Faster Payments, Increased Transparency and Improved Security. ensuring ethically source goods and product authenticity, making customers confident.
Key technology trends that impact retail businesses
- Extended reality / virtual and augmented reality
- Predictive Analytics (Big Data)
- Micro-Moments
- Recommendation Engines
- Facial Recognition Technology
- Robotic Store Assitants
- Customer Chat Bots
- Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Equipment
- Order fulfillment automation
- 5G Network
- Blockchain Technology
- Sustainability
Sustainability
Customers now demand green products and sustainable practices hence, eco-friendly supply chain practices are important like cardboard packaging. Many customers deciding to spend their money on cleaner, more conscious brands.
As with greater transparency, customers can know carbon and water footprint as well as workers rights and welfare.
