Customers Force Retailers Into New Territory

Online shopping | BCBusiness
Demand from consumers is slowly forcing Canadian retailers to hock their wares via the Internet.

A new report shows that Canadian retailers are hesitant about going mobile, but are being forced to by shoppers who are ahead of them in multi-channel shopping.

Coming soon to a Canadian retailer near you – maybe: mobile shopping.

A recent survey by the Retail Council of Canada and IDC Retail Insights shows that Canadian retailers recognize that they have to go mobile to retain customers, but are hesitant about committing to it. While most of their American counterparts jumped wholeheartedly into mobile retail a couple of years ago, Canadian retailers have been taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Canadian mobility solution adoption is limited, at 14 per cent for the retail sector overall, and 22 per cent for companies with 5,000 or more employees. This tentativeness regarding a major change in retail methodology probably reflects the general Canadian conservatism but there are other reasons. For example, while 52 per cent of Canadian retailers believe mobility is critical to business success, less than one-third have alignment on strategy or priorities.

And those who are making the move are doing so carefully. Most are still in the initial phase of developing the infrastructure and choosing the software and network capabilities required.

The study insisted that Canadian retailers need to start developing a roadmap for customer interaction, imagining their target customer’s engagement needs, and then identifying the steps that must be taken to satisfy these needs.

This is a typical technology rollout approach with a twist. Customer needs are advancing rapidly and could change while change initiatives are still ongoing, so retailers are continually aiming at a moving target.

To counter this, the study suggests that retailers identify one or two immediate applications needs and pilot these while scalable infrastructure is put in place. This will also prove business value, which is still questioned among Canadian retailers.

However, the writing is clearly on the wall for retailers in this country. The customer is quickly outpacing the retailer in terms of technology adoption – typically a customer today pulls out a smartphone and performs research on a potential purchase on the spot.

“The customer is demanding an omni-channel retail experience where there is transparency in all interactions,” the report said.