The Next Battle For Retail: Convenience – Part 1
The following post is part 1 of a 2 part series.
Digital behaviors have become dominant in a lot of everyday household purchasing categories and influences how we entertain ourselves, how we move from point A to point B, and what we wear and how we source it. We’ve seen those similar trends start to emerge in other adjacent categories at varying rates of adoption with retail being one of them.
The timeless truth of retail is that consumers will always want better prices, increased selection, and more convenience. While the economics of the internet drove down prices and offered an increase in selection, we’re seeing a fundamental shift towards addressing the final consumer need of convenience. This has become the next battleground as omnichannel retailers look to borrow from the eCommerce playbook to reduce points of friction in the path-to-purchase.
In the eyes of consumers, this a battle worth fighting and, more importantly, paying for. Today’s modern consumer is one driven by dual-earning households leading always-on digital lives. While price and selection still remain important, there isn’t much more room to play in driving incremental value for consumers leaving retailers to battle for convenience as the next key differentiator and source of competitive advantage.
While many retailers had been experimenting with new forms of technology, the high-profile launch of Amazon Go increased the pressure and accelerated an all-hands-on-deck fight to bridge the gap between the offline and online world.
Stay tuned for part 2…
Sources:
- eMarketer, Frictionless Commerce 2020
- Unlocking the customer value chain: How decouplers drive consumer disruption by Thales S. Teixeira
