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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report – Behaviors of Mobile-Enabled Consumers Complicate the Meaning of “Going to the Store.”
4 challenges & 3 benefits of Order-Ahead for retailers:
- Challenge: Pricing must be consistent between online and in-store offerings
- Challenge: Dynamic pricing (changing price online based on consumer) doesn’t work in-store
- Benefit: Error reduction – online orders are less prone to error than face to face or phone
- Challenge: Online ordering for in-store pickup requires exact inventory data
- Benefit: However brief, the pickup counter for order-ahead is still an opportunity to upsell & cross sell
- Challenge: Retailer apps to facilitate order ahead tend to leave behind unregistered “guest” checkout
- Benefit: Highly engineered customer experiences – look & feel, policies, inventory, etc.
About Report
When card-not-present makes the customer-not-present, what is the function of a store?
Consumers armed with smartphones first disrupted brick-and-mortar retail by comparison shopping while in-store. Now nearly 1 in 3 U.S. adults who comparison shop in-store end up purchasing elsewhere. Buy-online-pickup-in-store services shorten shoppers’ store visits to fleeting appearances. From electronic price tags to “dark stores,” retailers seek the right store capabilities to retain and serve their mobilized customers.
