Retailers delivering customers’ expectations and provide a seamless shopping experience – in-store, online or through a mobile device will gain loyalty and a competitive advantage that drives sales, according to an article on Risnews.edgl.com.
The article cited the Accenture Seamless Retail Study, which found that 49% of consumers believe the best thing retailers can do to improve the shopping experience is to better integrate in-store, online and mobile shopping channels, according to the article. Eighty-nine percent of consumers said it’s important for retailers to let them shop for product in the way that is most convenient for them, regardless the channel they use.
According to the article, 94% of consumers found in-store shopping was easy, then 74% of consumers said online shopping is easy and 26% of consumers found mobile phone shopping experience is easy.
Consumers are expecting interaction with retailers to be customized, uncomplicated and instantaneous. Consistency weighs heavily on the consumer experience. According to the article, 74% of consumers expect retailer’s online pricing to be the same as in-store pricing and 61% expect a retailer’s online promotions to be the same as its in-store promotions.
The benchmark analysis by Accenture indicated that 73% of retailers offer the same promotions online as in-store and only 16% offer the same prices online as they do in-store. An additional 43% of consumers surveyed expect a retailer to offer the same product assortment online as they do in store, while only 19% of retailers actually offer the same product assortment, according to the article.
The survey found online shopping is growing as a consumer preference. Seventy-three percent of respondents said they participated in the practice of “showrooming” or browsing at least once in-store and then buying online. There were 88% of consumers said they participated in “webrooming” or browsing online and then buying in-store.
Additional survey results found that 61% of consumers will buy products online after hours, but 36% will buy it online from the retailer’s website and only 22% of consumers will shop online for the best price, according to the article.