Investments in technology and personalization will drive loyalty in essential retail

What it means: Essential retail sectors truly have the most to gain through enhanced technology across retail channels due to the nature of consumer behavior in these environments. Stores need to be easy to navigate, provide clear value, deliver experiences and services that enhance shopping, save time in a consumer’s day and remove friction points. All of these add up to a retail experience that becomes a “must-shop” for consumers, and one that they may go out of their way to engage with. New predictions from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, detail how retailers will leverage technology to get ahead of evolving customer demands and operational challenges. Against an uncertain macro environment, and growing consumer desire for ever more personalized brand treatment, customers are increasingly selective with how and where they spend their money in 2023. As retailers compete for wallet share, they must deliver flexible, tailored shopping experiences to attract new footfall and keep both online and in-store customers loyal. Retail Leader Pro talked with Ryan McCarthy, Aruba’s senior solutions marketing manager of global retail, about how consumer expectations will put a heavy burden on IT teams to deliver seamless operations while supporting the pace of technological change. In the first of this two-part article series, we examine how technology advancements impact loyalty and provide consumers with a high-tech personalized experience. Retail Leader Pro (RL Pro): How can an improved consumer experience improve loyalty for retailers? Ryan McCarthy: Delivering consistent, personalized and immersive experiences for consumers across the full spectrum of customer experiences — whether online, instore or a combination — improves loyalty in multiple ways. It demonstrates retailer responsiveness, answers today’s expectations for frictionless experiences, enables customers to shop however and whenever they prefer, differentiates a retailer from the competition, and sets the competitive bar higher. This means all others are measured against the retailer that offers the most desirable and integrated physical, digital and virtual experiences. RL Pro: What are the greatest opportunities for grocery, drug and convenience retailers to improve consumer experience with technology? McCarthy: Although technology has the potential to improve customer touchpoints across the board, the greatest opportunities for today’s grocery, drug and convenience retailers fall broadly into the categories of: blending online and in-store experiences. creating seamless and contactless in-store processes. digitalizing inventory management and logistics. automating order fulfillment. deploying solutions that include comprehensive partner ecosystems for smooth integrations. leveraging advances in data analytics to enable meeting customer demands in real time. implementing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered networking solutions as the foundation for ensuring that all other technology applications can deliver exceptional customer and associate experiences anywhere, anytime and on any device. RL Pro: Where do you see the greatest potential for grocery, drug and convenience retailers to grow in personalization in 2023? McCarthy: In 2023, the greatest potential for grocery, drug and convenience retailers to grow in personalization revolve around delivering better in-store and omnichannel experiences: Deploy a modern wired and wireless network that can support the applications and devices needed for delivering personalized experiences as poor network performance will result in poor personalized experiences, regardless of which applications or devices a retailer adopts. Implement electronic shelf labels to enable customer-facing personalization, such as displaying pricing based on the proximity of a known customer, as well as improving inventory management to ensure a customer’s preferred item is adequately stocked. As we move to more hyper-aware stores, electronic shelf labels will begin to play a bigger part in how retailers manage their inventory — both in-store and throughout their supply and distribution chains. Develop a strategy for deploying smart carts that permit shoppers to tally items as they’re placed in a cart and avoid checkout lanes altogether. With some of the largest national grocery, drug and convenience retailers already rolling out this technology, all others need a near-term strategy for following suit or risk being left behind. Adopt location-aware networking technologies in-store to provide sensor-driven capabilities for identifying a specific shopper’s device — when the individual enters a store and connects to the network, collecting data about where a shopper dwells, and logging purchases for loyalty programs, inventory management and revenue applications. This permits automatically displaying preferred pricing or loyalty point offers for purchases, sending related product suggestions to a mobile device and seamlessly providing all data to enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems to initiate related back-end processes. Location awareness also enables personalization via a wayfinding app, which can help customers navigate quickly and seamlessly to desired products. In a drug store setting, location awareness can reduce waiting in line for a prescription by alerting staff that a customer has arrived at the store. Create omnichannel experiences by continued blending of online and in-store. For example, enabling a grocery customer to begin a purchase online, shop in-store for additional items, such as bakery, deli, etc., complete the purchase from a mobile device, empower in-store teams to quickly fulfill items, and deliver the entire order to the customer curbside. Use augmented reality (AR) to present customers with products that match their specific needs, such as holding a mobile device up to a shelf and seeing which products are both low in saturated fat and soy-free. Or, holding a device up to fresh vegetables to receive recipe options, ingredient lists and accompanying products that also meet dietary needs, such as lactose-free. What’s next: Using technology to improve efficiencies on small steps in the path to purchase — such as pre-ordering prepared foods and deli items, eliminating complex pricing signage, and signaling to consumers items that are out of stock as they walk in — could be game changers for the consumer experience. Essential retailers have the added pressure of solving for the balance of technology and human capital in a store environment, but ultimately technologies that allow employees to focus on servicing shoppers will help retailers win loyalty. Retailers don’t need to work harder for consumers with add-ons, they just need to be smarter in how they get consumers in and out of the retail experience with ease.