How to break the barriers between digital and physical experiences

We are living through extraordinary times. Online has changed everything; pureplays have ripped up the retail rulebook and started again. But it is more complicated than ‘cool online-only ventures = the future’ and ‘old school bricks and mortar outfits = the past’. There is innovation, and successes and failures, on both sides of the retail fence.

So says our Editor, Scott Thompson, in a new blog post for IMRG. As competition intensifies and customers become increasingly demanding and tech savvy, online retailers are investing large amounts in such areas as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, warehousing and logistics, voice search services and analytics and measurement.

At the same time, forward thinking bricks and mortar retailers are boosting their e-commerce and in-store operations whilst playing to their strengths. “It’s all about reinvention in the face of frictionless shopping, deploying in-store technology to replicate the online customer experience,” Thompson writes.

And that doesn’t involve going head to head with Amazon. As Sean McKee, Director of E-commerce and CX at schuh, recently commented: “If you attempt to out-do Amazon, you will fail. What can we do that Amazon can’t? Trained staff interacting with customers in real-time in physical locations. The Amazon Go model wouldn’t be our cup of tea.”

“Whether you’re a pureplay or High Street stalwart, it’s ultimately about evolving via the roll-out of emerging technologies in an ambitious but measured way that meets customers’ demands,” Thompson concludes.