A look at how personal experience will transform the future of retail

Brands and retailers are always striving to forge a personal connection with the shopper, but the quest was severely curtailed when a global pandemic hit in early 2020, shutting down stores in both the U.S. and internationally.

In response, retailers amped up use of digital media as brands searched for new ways to engage shoppers, but also methods to measure engagement.

Ishac

Three retail industry leaders shared insight into those strategies in a Digital Signage Today webinar, "The Future of Retail is Getting Personal" on Sept. 30, sponsored by Intel.

David Roth, CEO of The Store WPP and chairman, BAV Group; Maroun Ishac, director of business development in the retail, banking, hospitality and education division at Intel, and Jay Hutton, co-founder and CEO, VSBLTY, spoke to the present and future of retail marketing.

"What we have seen, not only are the trends accelerating, but the consumer rate and pace of adapting and changing have also accelerated," Roth said. "Overall, that's a very good thing for all of us, and especially those of us who have been working in this interesting technological area of the fusing of technology, consumers, commerce, together."

Along with Intel, The Store published the book "The History of Retail in 100 Objects" a few years ago. The process of developing the book showed Roth that despite more consumers turning to digital shopping, there's still a connection to physical stores that can't be broken.

"They fulfill both social and transactional values and functionality," Roth said. "We forget the social element of that, at our peril."

Retail in the digital age isn't about having a lot of "stuff" in stores, according to Roth. Stores today must have a variety of products that stand out, grab consumers' attention and tell a story. Retailers have to include "brand-centric" items that not only drive sales, but also connect with shoppers in a short amount of time.

"One of the things we've spent a lot of time thinking about and looking at is the whole notion of the store of not only being the place where you physically by things and have that journey, but also being a medium in its own right," Roth said. "That's where I think we'll see an amazing change in development over the course of the next 18 months or so."

Roth

Roth presented a virtual tour of "The History of Retail in 100 objects" during the webinar. The video emphasized components of visibility computer vision with automized data that validates media impressions and measures costumer traffic in three zones: entice, engage and interact. More than 80% of shoppers make impulse purchase decisions in store at the point of sale, compared to online. It drove home the point that digital display marketing is vital to increase sales.

"In the long term, sales of products cannot simply be the primary strategic purpose or metric for success of the store," Ishac said. "Some retailers are really struggling with this reality. The knee-jerk reaction among a number of them is to simply downsize and marginalize the role of the store."

Some retailers, however, have embraced an "omnichannel" approach, making all sales channels act as one. Ishac sees that as oversimplifying retail strategy. He argues the approach should be more complex.

"Some retailers, as they're starting to create their own physical stores, they recognize that in order to fully actualize their brand, they need to animate a physical process and create a remarkable experience for their consumers," Ishac said. "Not necessarily to move product, but more critically to move the hearts and minds of consumers. Why? To sell them the idea, the essence and value of their brand."

Ishac believes the future of the store will transform into a place where consumers develop emotional reactions to products. This move should, in turn, create opportunities for brands to stand out, built trust and develop allegiance in a crowded marketplace.

Hutton

"I'm not saying stores will not sell product, all of them will, many will," Ishac said. "But product sales will ride on the back of remarkable experiences and, more importantly, store as a medium will be held to entirely new standards for generating immediate, memorable sales."

In the next several years, Hutton believes in-store interaction will still be important for measuring brand success. "In store we have the opportunities to monitor people. Not visits, not impressions, necessarily, but actual people," Hutton said. "We can see their emotion, we can see their gender, we can see their age, we can see how they're interacting with brands. Brands are desperate to understand that — they don't get that data on the internet."

Face-to-face interaction forms a connection between brand, seller and buyer, Hutton said. If brands can forge that bond, they can take the product with the buyer long after they've left the store.

"The store becomes a means of fulfillment, but the relationship isn't between retailer and person, but brand and person and that's where they want to go," Hutton said.

To listen to the entire webinar, free for downloading, click here.