Tag Archive for: technology
We have come to an end. This is the final article in this series and I’ve been struggling to find a fitting finale for it. We have covered topics ranging from customer service, customization, psychology to retail sustainability and global influence. All relevant sides to this major economic engine. I have conducted relevant research and read a lot of expert opinions. I think the only thing left to say is how I picture my future shopping experience.
What makes me so special?
Simply? The future shopper generation is my generation: The Millennials (Synchrony Financial, 2017). These shoppers will be technology-oriented. I am a futurist, hence the title. These shoppers will make purchases mostly online, but they will visit brick-and-stones store to benefit from merged service experiences! I’m partial to bookshop-cafés for example. Further, Millennial shoppers will opt for augmented reality to enhance their experience (ibid); I limit myself to trying out new hairstyles on mobile apps…
What I am trying to say is that I am a tiny drop in a massive storm that is about to come down on the retail industry. Together with my fellow “drops”, I have the power to shape the future and this is how I picture my future shopping experience:
First, I would like to bring to your attention the Law of Technological Adoption. As Taylor Romero said in his TED Talk “Everything invented before you were born: it’s just how it’s always been. Everything invented before you were 30: it’s innovation. Everything invented after you are 30: it’s impossible.” (Taylor Romero, 2016).
Let’s take a product that I like: books. You cannot go wrong with books. Nowadays, books come in many formats; hardcover, softcover, eBooks, audio books. When I was a kid, those formats were more limited. So, softcover and hardcover, it’s just how it’s always been. Ebooks? Innovation. I can take an entire library with me in just one tiny device, everywhere, every day. Currently, I’m still in my ‘innovation’ window of opportunity. What I really want, what I imagine many an avid reader wants, is total immersion in the world of stories.
I would love to walk into a bookshop and be welcomed by the smell of chocolate, hot pastry, and fresh paper. When I walk into a specific section, I want the authors to talk to me, let them be the advertisers.
Imagine a holographic Shakespeare popping up in the Classics section to tell you more about Hamlet, or King Lear, or Romeo and Juliet. This technology is not as science fiction as you might think. With the help of digital holographic projectors and optical screens that reflect the light of projected holographic 3-D images to a target observation area, digital 3-D signage and holographic in-car dashboard display is just around the door (Phys, 2016). Why shouldn’t it be adopted in the retail industry?
How wonderful would it be, if I would walk into the Fantasy aisle and an entire panorama of the Lord of the Rings’ Middle Earth would appear with Aragorn’s holographic self to escort me to the cashier. Talk about personalization!
If I had doubts about my choice of literature and immersion, then the augmented reality technology from my phone would help me understand what each book is about. In any of these situations, I would get my information instantly and accurately, no “buffering” for me, no sir! Because I have no patience. My gratification needs to be instant.
For a long time, I thought that this imagined experience was just wishful thinking, a daydream, but technology has this miraculous quality of transforming the abstract into almost tangible interactions.
Technology is the avatar of what we dream and cannot express.
It makes self-interaction possible without selfishness. The retail industry of the future can help me understand myself better: letting me explore the reasons why I like certain products or services, the reason why I chose them, or why I am not trying out new ones. Most importantly, the accessibility of the retail industry would be so easy; I would not be held back by the inertia of buying simply because it’s comfortable. Everything will be comfortable. What is left to say other than the fact that I am looking forward to the future. And William Shakespeare speaking to me from the aisles. And being guided to a cashier by a favourite character. Thank you for imagining the future with me.
This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure.
This is the final entry for the Imagining the Future series. The entire collection can be read here.
A supply chain covers all businesses and individual contributors that are involved in creating a product, ranging from suppliers of raw materials to the end-customer.
Technological innovations can be used to upgrade traditional supply chains to smarter, more connected and highly efficient digital supply chains. This is not an easy process, as supply chains are very complex systems embedded in an even more complex global economy. Contributors often are internationally located, which involves dealing with different politics, trade and traffic laws, and quality control regulations.
I like to imagine it like the Butterfly Effect: a small wing flutter, a slight change of a process or regulation, might affect another stage in the chain.
Today, a supply chain is often a series of isolated steps taken through different stages of logistics such as manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation.
In a digital supply chain, those stages will be seamlessly connected and fully transparent to all individual contributors involved. A completely digital chain does not exist yet, but to keep up with demands and technology, and to profit from the financial benefits, many companies within different industries now started digitising their supply chains.
Whilst industries such as electronics are already further in the process of digitalising their chains, asset-intensive companies or consumer-facing companies, such as retail and fast-moving consumer goods, stayed behind [PWC, 2016].
How is the general supply chain going to change?
A digital chain becomes more transparent, which contributes to a better understanding of what every link in the chain is doing. Amongst others, this leads to:
- Improved collaboration: Real-time insights in the needs and challenges of others will be possible.
- Fast communication: Information that used to be delayed, as it had to move through each step and reach all stakeholders will be available to all simultaneously.
- Demand driven supply chain: Planning will be fast and flexible and away from just forecasting, instead of being demand driven.
The transformation to optimise supply chains becoming more reliable and responsive is driven by new technologies such as track-and-trace technologies, big data, cloud computing or the Internet of Things, but it’s not technology alone. People’s behaviour changed, they became multichannel consumers, more demanding, wanting the product delivered instantly and conveniently.
[PWC, 2016].
What do the changes in people’s behaviour and expectations mean for the retail supply chain?
Today, people purchase digitally. Online shopping is booming, even categories that relied on an in-person shopping experience moved online. In 2016, nearly two-thirds of consumers shopped online at least once a week, an increase of 41% from 2014.
People shop using multiple channels, be it in-store purchases, mobile, tablet or laptop, consistency, high quality and excellent service is expected, of course to the lowest costs (The Future of Retail Supply Chains, McKinsey, 2016).
Comparing competitors’ prices online or ‘showrooming’ – browsing in stores but buying from a cheap competitor online – give the consumer more power. Customers define more and more how companies have to structure their supply chains.
The shift to multichannel, the customer’s expectations such as same-day deliveries or returning online ordered goods free of charge – using any channel – lead to blurring the boundaries of channels. For example, goods ordered online but not liked can be returned back in-store.
This requires adaptation, to give a simple example:
Instant deliveries require a high stock of inventory in strategically positioned distribution centres. One centre might is enough to secure delivery within 2 or 3 days, same-day shipping requires more distribution centres. A piece of clothing that was ordered online gets returned in-store, means that the store now must stock an item that might is not sold usually or bring up time and costs of returning it to the distribution centre.
What does an optimised retail supply chain look like?
In the example above, technology that allows seeing inventory levels across the store network can help managing inventory levels across the store using various channels. A returned item that the store normally does not manage, can be delivered straight away to the next online order that comes in, saving time and operation costs to return that item to a distribution centre whilst cutting time on the delivery side. With technology, information about products that are stored anywhere, be it a store, a warehouse, can be made available to customers instantly.
But it can go further than just inventory management.
Imagine that drones could be used to deliver goods faster, a move Amazon is looking into. Or imagine virtual reality, used to shop online, letting customers enter a virtual store with products they actually can engage with whilst just sitting on their sofa in the living room. A whole new level of customer experience! – and a way to collect more data about the customer than was possible before. Every move, every product just looked at could be tracked.
Retailers that want to stay competitive need to find a right balance between quick wins and long-term strategic vision. The supply chain needs to become more customer-focussed, agile to fast respond to the changing needs of the consumers and cost-effective. Big data helps better predicting demand, even though combining internally available data with external, less transparent data as well as correctly interpreting the data will be challenging [KPMG, 2016].
What will change is the way the supply chain is looked at, seen as a cost driver – factors such as total cost of ownership, spend analysis and so on are very well understood – however, with technology, that brings an understanding of how customers’ behave, the supply chain will become a sales driver.
This post is brought to live by AQ’s Undergraduate Alexa V.
As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Alexa’s primary focus is in digital marketing.
