Guest Post: Neil is head of marketing for eMobileScan, one of the leading providers to the AIDC industry and now with stores launching across Europe, they are fast becoming one of the largest European retailers for handheld barcode scanners, If you’d like to write a guest post please see here
Technology has transformed our world, people spend more time chatting online then they do in the street, they meet online instead of in a café, Cell phones are our constant companion and they allow us to bring our virtual world with us where ever we go. They put a world of information right at our finger tips and they are there whenever we want them. Every day shoppers are turning to the internet to find what they want but there will always be a need for traditional retail stores, shoppers still want to see and feel what they are buying. Retailers now need to drag their stores into the 21st century and learn how they can offer the same advantages as the Ecommerce world. Cell phones can help them do just that.
Picture this,
You are at home looking through your kitchen to see what you need from the store, cell phone open with your shopping list App. Just tick the box for what you need, easy.
Now to the store,
You walk in, scan the virtual loyalty card on your phone, and pick up the in store wireless network, now back to you shopping list which has turned into a road map of the store you are standing in, with each destination on your road map an item on your shopping list, the floor staff have been notified of what you want and if anything is out of stock they will have it back on the shelf before you hit the aisle.
Pretty Good so far but it gets better.
Now as you follow the map on your phone you start getting messages offering you discounts and special offers, but these aren’t the usual offers that they try to pawn you off with ,they know exactly what you have bought in the past and they want you to buy it again and to get you to do that they will give you discounts in the form of a barcode which you just scan and there’s your discount.
So as your walk through the store, each item that goes into your cart is scanned on your phone and is added to your bag. Your shopping is done in record time, and you are heading for the checkout and you get one last message, telling you that there are some things that you might of forgot, and they are right, no nappies. Now you’ve got the nappies and its check out time.
Your bags are already packed so all you need to do is swipe your credit card and your done,
So you’ve doing pretty well your weekly shop is done without having to endure the hassle of queuing or brain dead staff, you know you haven’t forgotten a single thing and you’ve saved money, this makes you one happy customer.
So Who Wins?
Though you are saving time and money the big winner here is the retailer because they know you are happy and they know you will be back at the same time next week with your nice shiny credit card. Remember the special offers they got you to buy; turns our they are still making more money from these then if you had bought your normal brand. You thought they were doing you a favor suggesting that you had forgot the nappies, not really if you had left the store without those nappies that’s money that they would never see again.
The check out tills are gone and so are the staff needed to run those tills, you won’t see as many floor staff, that’s because they don’t need them anymore, the staff they do have now know exactly what they need to do so time wasting is cut and productivity is up, way up.
Ladies and Gentleman this is the future of retail it may not happen next week but it will happen soon, this is one of the few situation where everyone wins, well maybe not the stores that are still stuck in the last decade.
What would you think of this kind of set up, is it the future?
Let us know in the comments
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i just wonder how that future event translates into the thousand of jobs lost because of a reduced staff and overworked crew.