We are now in a digital age where technologies play an integral part of a customer’s life: they are omnipresent but are they omnipotent yet? A convergence of digital technologies is not to play one retailer off against the other but to holistically transform the customer shopping experience. Stores that serve to decode the customer sentiment and reinvent themselves are the ones that will survive.

Customers want retailers to give them the best deals, save their time and most importantly, transport them to a virtual space with the best experience that they’ll ever indulge in. Let’s see why traditional stores are on the verge of extinction.

Why the Traditional Store Is Passé

Traditionally a store used to be the only access point to a customer’s basic needs. As customers evolved and retailers vied for customer attention, digital retail technology boomed to the point of having one technology after another evaluating and implementing without actualizing the entire roadmap. Technologies like VR & AR were being experimented upon while the rest of the store spoke a different language.

From the stats quoted in nchannel, 64% of people think that customer experience is more important than price. This customer engagement is not only achieved through an intelligent store associate but also through disruptive technologies. Advanced digital technologies answer the needs of the customer and should offer an all-in-one medium providing that unified experience.

Customers would expect a seamless and faster check-out without the hassle of a long queue at the cash counter.

Traditional stores are dying quickly and it is high time retailers transform their stores together with all their channels, platforms and data to usher in the new and close the doors of their traditional stores.

Need for the Connected Store 2.0

So far we have seen stores bringing out technologies that individually impacted the retail industry. But we are yet to see these technologies coming together as one force providing a seamless unified experience.

A survey conducted by Netsuite and RSR Research speaks about how 95% of Retailers strongly agree that offline and online experiences must be blended while 78% also feel that rolling out disruptive technologies is a major challenge.

The connected store 2.0 is the future of a new retail reality that both retailers and customers must realize to serve this hyper-convergence.

Read our series of blogs in The Connected Store 2.0 below :

Part 2 : The Connected Store 2.0 – Mapping & Tracking Customer Frequency

Part 3 : The Connected Store 2.0 – In-store Customer Experience

Part 4 : The Connected Store 2.0 – Endless Self-service Possibilities

Part 5 : The Connected Store 2.0 – Beyond the In-store Experience

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