Consumers Return To The Store Shopping Experience, Electricity Providers Can Not Be Replaced

The latest survey by Accenture found that consumers showed signs of "return to the physical store". The proportion of consumers who planned to shop through physical stores increased to 26% from 18% a year ago. This trend is not only in China, but also in mature markets such as the United States.

The survey found that 93% of consumers said that physical store shopping was "very convenient / convenient", far higher than the network (75%) and mobile devices (61%). Therefore, although shopping experience of various channels is improving, but from the convenience point of view, the entity store still has absolute advantage.

The Accenture survey shows that the traditional retail industry is undergoing an unprecedented change due to the rise of the electricity supplier. Today's consumers have become non-stop consumer customers who use the Internet, access to stores, and keep in touch with social networks such as micro-blog and WeChat. To attract these consumers, traditional retailers must constantly spanform and undergo digital spanformation to become "seamless retailers".

Fortunately, some retailers have started to act. According to Accenture retailer's full channel retail capacity survey, 63% of traditional retailers have launched multi-channel retail. Of the surveyed companies, 61% already have independent official online stores, more than half (52%) have already opened online stores on third party platforms, and 30% have mobile clients. But on the whole, only 16% of retail enterprises give a positive evaluation of their current multi-channel retail strategy, while nearly 30% of respondents indicate that the strategy is not successful.

In order to help retailers understand and track the seamless demand of consumers, Accenture put forward 6 main directions to retailers: 1, relocate the physical stores; 2, a deep understanding of the mobile trend; 3, eliminate channel barriers; 4, upgrade distribution methods; 5, personalized interaction; 6, seize the essential needs of consumers.

1, relocate the physical store

When the news of traditional retailers shutting down from the market is everywhere, Accenture's research found interesting signs of consumers returning to the store. Although 68% of respondents indicated that future shopping would be more online, the proportion decreased by 8% compared to the previous year.

The trend of consumers returning to the store indicates that the shopping experience of the physical store can not be replaced by other channels. Therefore, while considering the contraction and expansion of the entity stores, the retailer needs to play the role of the entity store in a greater degree in the seamless retail environment. Physical stores and online channels should never be either one or the other, but support each other, so that there are more contacts that affect consumers and convenience consumers to satisfy consumers' demand for continuous shopping. How to relocate the role of physical stores in multiple channels will be one of the opportunities for retailers.

2. Have a deep understanding of the mobile trend.

The survey found that Chinese consumers' enthusiasm for mobile shopping is rising and higher than the global average. 42% of Chinese respondents said they plan to increase mobile shopping in the future, accounting for 23% in the US and the UK.

Statistics show that China Mobile Internet users have reached 650 million, close to the number of PC users, and the number of 4G users in 2017 is expected to reach 430 million. In 2013, the scale of China Mobile's shopping market reached 169 billion 600 million yuan, an increase of 168% over the previous year, higher than the growth rate of online shopping. Moreover, the proportion of the China Mobile shopping market scale to the scale of the online shopping market increased from 1.5% in 2011 to 9.2% in 2013.

In Accenture's research, 88% of Chinese retail business executives agree that mobile shopping will prevail in the next five years, but only 30% of retailers now have mobile shopping channels. This gap means huge business opportunities.

According to the survey, more than half of Chinese consumers are using or waiting for retail stores to push shopping tickets, points, real-time promotions and user reviews to mobile phones. They expect retailers to provide services through mobile devices in physical stores. Therefore, for retailers, apart from developing mobile shopping channels, mobile services can also become a powerful tool for personalized marketing in stores.

3, eliminate channel barriers

stay Digitization Under the influence of the trend, consumers are eager to shop without interruption. Especially for the younger generation with multiple mobile devices, switching between different devices and online and offline at any time and anywhere is natural as drinking water. The survey found that if online or mobile phones can get real-time inventory information of a retailer, 43% of the respondents will directly purchase from nearby stores. If a retailer has goods that consumers need, but not in business hours, 59% of the respondents will purchase the online or mobile channels of the retailer.

A considerable proportion of consumers have formed new shopping habits. For them, there is no boundary and sequence between online and offline. "Seamless" has been rooted in the heart. 1/3 of consumers think that the most important thing for retailers to improve is the integrated shopping experience. If retailers can integrate different channels to eliminate barriers between different channels, they will promote more consumer buying behavior. In addition to easily realized returns, retailers can consider providing more convenient payment, distribution and checkout methods.

The survey shows that Chinese consumers' preference for online, offline goods, prices and promotions shows a more complicated aspect than the mature western market. Some consumers want convergence online and offline, but there are still more consumers who like to find pleasure in differentiated products, prices and promotions. Therefore, retailers need to integrate price, category and promotion strategies.

　　 4, upgrade Distribution service

Compared with other markets in the world, most Chinese consumers prefer door-to-door service. The survey shows that this phenomenon is not limited to online or mobile shopping, and many Chinese consumers are willing to deliver door-to-door shopping.

Compared with global consumers, Chinese consumers are also looking forward to faster distribution services. According to the survey, 58% of Chinese respondents believe that delivery and time service is very important, which is significantly higher than the global demand ratio of 41%.

The higher expectation of Chinese consumers for distribution has raised higher requirements for retailers' distribution capabilities. How to optimize the supply chain and provide a fast and convenient distribution option under the condition of comprehensive trade-off between consumer demand and internal cost is a major problem for retailers to cross seamless retail.

For return, foreign consumers think convenience is more important than price, while Chinese consumers have the opposite idea. Nearly half (43%) of Chinese consumers will choose the most economical way to return goods.

　　 5, personalization Interaction

Chinese consumers are very willing to accept the opportunity of personalized interaction. 79% of consumers said that they would not mind providing personal information to retailers as long as they helped to provide real personalized services. 80% of consumers said that if someone offered a personalized order / distribution plan, they would increase their purchases.

The study found that the most popular ways to influence consumers' purchase decisions are personalized shop discounts and coupons sent by e-mail, and personalized promotion through APP is also playing an increasingly important role. Therefore, retailers need to interact with consumers in a multi-dimensional and multi way way, so as to effectively promote consumers' purchasing behavior.

Personalized interaction has the characteristics of "customization", and how to provide consumers with "tailored" interaction for consumers, which not only tests the data collection ability of retailers, but also tests the ability of data analysis. In this survey, only 13% of retailers had in-depth integrated analysis of consumer data obtained from multiple channels. Therefore, retailers still need to continuously improve their data collection and analysis capabilities.