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| Basford discusses what the new world of retail is really like. |
Retailers have to reinvent customer engagement in a new world where consumer behaviour has changed. Scott Basford, Regional Busness Head, Omnichannel, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP Inc., explained that it is now an omnichannel world, where consumers are no longer "fully" in a retail store
even if they are physically there:
- Four in 10 customers compare prices online
- Eight in 10 (82%) customers will use smartphones to help them decide
- One in five (23%) customers make a purchase on the phone while inside the store
"There is no single customer journey any more," Basford said, noting that consumers may research online but buy offline, or the other way around, depending on the product. "Today the customer journey could be anywhere...It's not a B2C world, it's a C2B world."
There are four pillars to playing successfully in an omnichannel world, Basford said:
Brand consistency
Retailers must their brand experience right, offering brand consistency on all the touch points. This extends to offering the same pricing on each channel, and ensuring that the colours for marketing materials are the same from channel to channel.
Personalisation
Customers expect that retailers know who they are and how they have engaged with the brand.
They want the right product at the right time, and a simplified product selection process, Basford said. One in five consumers is willing to pay 20% more for personalised products and services, he disclosed, while personalised email delivers six times the transaction rates and improved customer satisfaction compared with ordinary email.
A classic faux pas would be to send an email to a customer about buying a new printer just after they have bought one, Basford said. Achieving a single view of the customer can however be difficult across multiple touch points, he acknowledged.
UK-based Superfeet* is an example of digital personalisation, making custom insoles for shoes with a HP 3D printer, Basford said.
Customers want to have the option to "click to collect" - buying online and picking up the purchase at a bricks-and-mortar location - or have the goods delivered to the home.
HP has formulated five guiding principles on how to become truly omnichannel. All principles have to be active simultaneously, Basford said:
Drive thought leadership towards customer centricity and change management across the company, breaking through silos.
Have a consistent brand experience
Long-term investment in tech, in big data, need CRM system with single view of customer, need to invest in dot company experience
Strategic choice points. Hard decisions will have to be made on what to discontinue, and what to begin adopting or restructure, Basford said.
Do, learn, do. There are still many unknowns in the process, Basford explained. Experimentation to see what works and can be operationalised will be a key part of the process.
What is unique to Asia, Basford said is that there is a huge population, and the large percentage of youths. There are also two distinct worlds. "Gen Z will be the largest group of consumers by 2020." Basford said. "We also have a large group of silver spenders." Gen Z is popularly taken to be the generation born between 1995 and 2014, born in the age of the Internet and likely to be omnichannel, while retirees are described as the 'silver' generation.
"An experiential journey can drive foot traffic, especially among younger customers," he said.
The number of major Asian e-tailers is particularly high, with JD and Tmall in China, Flipkart and Amazon in India, Rakuten and Amazon in Japan. While the number of e-tailers may imply that physical stores are on their way out, HP believes that retail is not dead.
"Retail is just going to be reinvented," said Basford. "The collision of offline to online (O2O) is happening faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world."
Retailers like Alibaba - which owns Tmall - are investing in O2O concepts such as showrooming, the practice of going to see the product in an actual store, and then ordering it online, Basford commented. Alibaba has also rebranded mom and pop stores as Tmall stores, where e-purchases can be collected. "Customers are going there for the experience than to look for a bargain," he said.
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| Ng said consumers want value, convenience and a unique experience. |
Daren Ng, Director, Mobility and Commercial Solutions, Personal Systems Business, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP Inc., followed on the experiential and O2O themes with survey results that showed:
- Eight in 10 (81%) of shoppers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience;
- Six in 10 (61%) consumers value asking a sales associate for product recommendations;
- Nearly four in 10 (38%) further say convenience trumps the lowest price, and
- Almost two-thirds (64%) want to start an order online and have a store associate help them finish the order in-store
HP's point-of-sale (POS) systems help retailers to deliver to customer expectations. Chemist Warehouse in Australia has 350 stores nationwide and uses HP POS systems to serve 2.5 million customers with 99.99% POS uptime, Ng said. Foodfare in Singapore, another HP POS customer, has a customer-facing display that allows shoppers to see purchase totals even before receipts are printed out.
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*Superfeet does not ship outside of the UK.
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