77% of UK consumers believe retailers are not doing enough to make shopping in stores enjoyable, according to new research from leading independent IT services company Vista Retail Support.
61% of respondents want retailers to give them a real in-store buzz by deploying technologies such as kiosks, interactive screens, augmented reality (AR) and smart mirrors so that shoppers can explore products and how they might look or work.
Two-third of consumers (66%) said pushy store assistants put their backs up and 63% said they give up on buying anything if they see long queues at check-out tills.
“Consumers have less and less patience with stores that don’t have the technology in place to make their shopping experience convenient and efficient or those which have poorly-trained staff,” says James Pepper, technical services director at Vista Retail Support. “Shoppers know that the new interactive touch screens and kiosks, which are powered by AR technologies, make visits more enjoyable and also expect retailers to adopt advances such as mobile payments to eradicate areas of frustration. When retail is so competitive, exciting technology is increasingly essential to attracting shoppers through the door.”
In the research, 53% of consumers wanted to use interactive kiosks so they can locate products in a store, check prices and stock availability and receive offers and product recommendations.
Among the irritations that consumers say put them off going into a store are messy or disorganised stock (identified by 64% of consumers) and overcrowding (selected by 62% of respondents).
“If retailers ignore what consumers are saying in our survey, there’s a danger they will sustain real damage to their bottom lines,” added Pepper. “Most consumers – 55% – told us they make a purchase in their first visit and exactly half said they would buy more if they could use interactive games or smart devices.
“But if they are put off coming through the door, that is a serious amount of revenue that store operators are missing out on. Retailers have got to make the store environment attractive and train their staff properly so that consumers feel like spending.”
But how will this digital transformation be paid for? Through Mobile Point of Sale (MPoS) and deferred payments, according to the latest research from Econocom UK, a leading provider of digital transformation solutions.
According to the study, an overwhelming 95% of retailers believe that payment-over-time solutions are either important or very important to delivering future digital innovation in the retail industry, with 42% saying the latter. Furthermore, 99% of all retailers said that a payment-over-time model would make it easier for them to achieve their digital transformation goals.
