Physical stores will evolve from simply being a place to stock and sell products, to acting as a portal where visitors can learn, socialize, and experience and test new products. In addition, stores will have a growing role in influencing and fulfilling orders across an increasingly complex path to purchase.
For this to truly happen, retailers need to view their stores in new ways and judge them by a new set of measures, across the following four areas.
In terms of retailer economics—and collecting data on shoppers and their in-store behavior—it will be critical to build new capabilities that help retailers better understand:
“One of the challenges physical retailers have right now is measuring how people are using their stores,” says Chad Stewart, Founder and CEO, Flow Solutions. “In Japan and in Asia, there is a significant lack of IoT in physical stores.”
But as retailers build digital capability and invest in O2O integration, the flow of meaningful data in physical stores will significantly increase. The challenge for the sector will be to recognize and realize this data, to ensure it is captured and translated into customer-focused insights.