Choice in retail has traditionally been about helping consumers to select one product over another.
Today, it’s about helping shoppers choose multiple products simultaneously. Categories are dead. Connected Consumers are bored of negotiating their way through multiple categories to find their product of choice. They want retailers to do it for them. What does this mean for the future of retail?
Streamline and cross-sell
Retailers must engage with shopper mindsets and offer a range of well-chosen solutions if they are to succeed. They need to curate and merchandize products according to consumers’ specific need states. In the future, family cars will be sold alongside baby equipment, and shoppers will be able to buy a pair of oven gloves on impulse while browsing the cookery book section. For retailers, this opens up a wealth of cross-selling opportunities to maximize the value of each visit. In this brave new world retailers and manufacturers will collaborate with their competitors in a joint pursuit of growth.
Towards a personalized assortment
One of the fundaments of modern retail is to make shoppers’ lives easier. Bringing disparate products together facilitates choice and so benefits the time poor consumer. Sometimes we forget this, assuming that offering more creates confusion and dissatisfaction. The challenge for retail is to achieve the right balance between only satisfying the primary mission and offering too much at once. Our FutureBuy study points out that the seventh strongest driver (for 21% of shoppers) of in-store shopping is being able to buy multiple things at once. In the digital space this factor is the tenth driver, 18% of shoppers say they go online to piece together complementary products.
In summary
With growth in developed markets being hard to come by and emerging markets slowing down, retailers and manufacturers are under pressure to grow through innovation. To do this effectively, you will need to broaden your horizons and collaborate with new friends.
Source:GFK
