Retailers need to become more customer-centric, bringing seamless shopping experiences to bridge online and physical shopping through integrated data to compete with giant e-commerce providers, says Diebold Nixdorf, a bank and retail technology provider.
"By 2020, we foresee retailers in Thailand will move to connected commerce, which is the ability to bridge the physical and digital worlds to serve dynamic changes in customer behaviour and compete with new global e-commerce rivals," said Chukiat Jearjesdakul, managing director of Diebold Nixdorf Thailand.
Retailers are shifting investment in technology from back-end support systems to revolutionise their stores to provide customers with a retail experience in every customer touchpoint.
Five years ago, retailers were focused on investment in multi-format stores through locations and various physical stores with a focus on channels, he said.
Mr Chukiat said the store evolution is driven by the readiness of big data analytics, facial recognition, automation, cloud-based services, sensors and Internet of Things, mobile devices, wireless communication such as Near Field Communication, beacons, electronic shelve labels, mobile point of sales (mobile POS) as well as various electronic payment methods.
Retail will be more mobile for staff and buyers will do more self-service checkout for speedy shopping.
The company expects 50% of total in-store transactions will be completed through mobile POS and self-service checkouts in 2018, or later.
However, Mr Chukiat said the store evolution is one of priorities that leading retailers are investing in this year.
Moreover, shoppers can embark on various shopping experiences with more choices for payments and deliveries. Consumers can use their mobile devices to scan and automatically pay by themselves (scan and go), or through a use of a mobile terminal equipped with mobile self-scanning software and pay in-store.
Shoppers can even take partial products and the rest will be delivered to their homes and they pick up later at automatic digital lockers nearby their locations.
To provide personalised shopping, retailers need to modernise their legacy IT systems that allow only single sources of data to be integrated for individual customers.
According to Accenture, the personalised experience drives revenue growth by 5-15% and increase marketing spending by 10-30%.
"We have customers in developed countries that deployed the mobile shopping experience in stores, personalised promotion and self- service tools, which help increase sales by 25%," said Mr Chukiat.
While pure online e-commerce players make huge investments in a fully-automated self-service in store experience, Mr Chukiat said existing retailers can survive digital disruption through multiple platforms.
