A new report from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Accenture and SAP unit hybris, found that retailers’ ability to deliver a multichannel shopping experience is lagging behind customer expectations, according to a report in Business2Community.
Forrester found that 71% of consumers expect to view in-store inventory online, and 50% of them expect to buy products online and pick them up in store. However, only one-third of retailers reported having initiated basic omnichannel programs such as in-store pickup, cross-channel inventory visibility and store-based fulfillment.
According to the report, offering online inventory visibility made shoppers twice as likely to visit a store, leading to additional purchases vs. web-only transactions. Forrester found that 73% of responding consumers were likely or very likely to visit a local store if they could see its inventory online, while just 36% said they would do so if the information were not available online.
The report, “Consumer Desires vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding the Omnichannel Commerce Gap,” was based on responses from 256 U.S. and European retail and manufacturing decision-makers involved in ecommerce, and from 1,503 multi-channel shoppers.
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