Take a walk around the touch-free store

For­mer prime min­is­ter David Cameron famous­ly said: “I was the future once.” Many retail­ers that deployed immer­sive in-store expe­ri­ences, touch­screen dis­plays, self­ie-walls and vir­tu­al-real­i­ty head­sets per­haps thought the same thing when the pan­dem­ic hit.

Germa­pho­bic, social­ly-dis­tanced, coro­n­avirus-con­scious con­sumers have put the damp­en­ers on touchy-feely retail. When it comes to the store of the future, right now, touch-free inno­v­a­tive shop­ping expe­ri­ences are where it’s at.

Luck­i­ly, some busi­ness­es are already half-way there in reimag­in­ing bricks and mor­tar, as lock­downs in many coun­tries have forced brands to deploy a dig­i­tal-first approach at speed. As stores reopen there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate new expe­ri­ences using data, shop­per pro­files and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ele­vate high street spaces to the next lev­el.  

What might a touch-free store look like?

“The inter-rela­tion­ship between phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal retail will con­tin­ue to grow, and COVID-19 is essen­tial­ly accel­er­at­ing the trend that was already out there,” explains Nick Coop­er, group exec­u­tive direc­tor, insights and ana­lyt­ics, at Lan­dor & FITCH. 

If you believe the future is already here, but just not even­ly dis­trib­uted, take a walk around Burberry’s first social retail store, which recent­ly opened in Shen­zhen, south­ern Chi­na. This will give you a flavour of the store of the future. With a spe­cif­ic pro­gramme on WeChat, the country’s most pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing app, cus­tomers can click on exclu­sive con­tent and per­son­alised expe­ri­ences in-store, then share details with friends. No touch­ing is need­ed.

Every item in-store has a tag with a QR code, scan them for more sto­ry­telling. Each cus­tomer is also giv­en a play­ful ani­mal char­ac­ter via Snapchat that evolves as they walk around the store. The gam­i­fied expe­ri­ence takes retail to anoth­er lev­el. The more that cus­tomers engage with this form of aug­ment­ed retail, the more rewards they get through Burberry’s social cur­ren­cy.

“Future bricks-and-mor­tar des­ti­na­tions will cer­tain­ly become more hybridised. In the future we expect to see brands shift stores towards stu­dio con­cepts where retail space becomes media,” says Antony Parham, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor at Imag­i­na­tion.

Cer­tain­ly, the touch-free store of the future will be heavy on so-called c‑commerce – cura­tion, con­tent, con­ve­nience and con­nec­tions. Nike and adi­das lead the way with their con­cept stores, using people’s per­son­al smart­phones as the con­duit, con­nect­ing cus­tomer pro­files and in-store activ­i­ty.

Geo-loca­tion, 5G speeds, QR codes and data are the new fuel in this space. What was once gim­micky will be more pur­pose­ful and only be utilised if it dri­ves engage­ment.

“Right now, rich­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences are being tri­alled and iter­at­ed more quick­ly and the excit­ing part is that inno­va­tion is here to stay. It is also evolv­ing into every part of the cus­tomer jour­ney,” says Michelle Du-Prât, exec­u­tive strat­e­gy direc­tor at House­hold.

Is post pandemic retail post-touch?

The big ques­tion for phys­i­cal retail in a COVID-con­scious world, where the touchy-feely bit is not exact­ly top of mind, is what is it aim­ing to achieve? Using dig­i­tal 3D avatars to try prod­ucts in-store before pur­chas­ing, as used by Shi­sei­do, or vir­tu­al make up via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as deployed MAC Cos­met­ics, or mag­ic mir­rors, are good to have, but they’re unlike­ly to be game-chang­ers.

The big ques­tion for phys­i­cal retail in a COVID-con­scious world, where the touchy-feely bit is not exact­ly top of mind, is what is it aim­ing to achieve? Using dig­i­tal 3D avatars to try prod­ucts in-store before pur­chas­ing, as used by Shi­sei­do, or vir­tu­al make up via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as deployed MAC Cos­met­ics, or mag­ic mir­rors, are good to have, but they’re unlike­ly to be game-chang­ers.

Rich­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences are being tri­alled and iter­at­ed more quick­ly — inno­va­tion is here to stay

“Retail­ers must not rely too heav­i­ly on the dig­i­tal con­nec­tion. The need for a well-con­sid­ered, engag­ing and for­ward-think­ing shop­ping envi­ron­ment that can adapt and change will play a major role in the sur­vival of bricks and mor­tar,” says Ewald Damen, cre­ative direc­tor at Vir­gile + Part­ners.

Espe­cial­ly when so much more to do with retail can be done in the com­fort of your liv­ing room. For instance, the new iPhones and iPad Pros all come with LiDAR, or light detec­tion and rang­ing sen­sors. These can assist in scan­ning cus­tomer sizes much more accu­rate­ly at home. There’s no need for a phys­i­cal store.

“Vir­tu­al real­i­ty, on the oth­er hand, could be used to give con­sumers the in-store expe­ri­ence from home. Devices like the Ocu­lus Quest 2 make it far more acces­si­ble for cus­tomers to achieve a VR expe­ri­ence. In the near future, brands may need to start think­ing about hir­ing games design­ers to cre­ate these inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al expe­ri­ences,” says Naji El-Ari­fi, head of inno­va­tion at Wun­der­man Thomp­son Com­merce.

Finding creative ways to help people shop

In fact, the phys­i­cal store accessed via a video-con­fer­enc­ing link, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, could soon be com­ing to a store near you. It’s an easy enhance­ment, it’s touch-free and could assist time-poor shop­pers with a busy sched­ule, those who are anx­ious on the high street or with health con­cerns. 

“If con­sumers are able to speak remote­ly to a shop assis­tant, who can then take them around the store or show them the grain of the leather on a new hand­bag in a near real-life sim­u­la­tion, it’s like­ly to improve brand loy­al­ty and increase sales,” accord­ing to Richard Clarke, exec­u­tive direc­tor of glob­al retail at Fujit­su.

For some store envi­ron­ments, the new book­ing econ­o­my is already here due to the pan­dem­ic. In a post-COVID world, this could be ele­vat­ed to achieve a more exclu­sive expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly for lux­u­ry bricks-and-mor­tar retail. The night­club door­man and his list for VIP guests has worked well for decades. 

“Retail­ers should con­sid­er ele­vat­ing the in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ence by intro­duc­ing reser­va­tions for more inti­mate and safe phys­i­cal shop­ping expe­ri­ences,” says Rebec­ca Robins, chief learn­ing and cul­ture offi­cer at Inter­brand.

“Cer­tain­ly, expe­ri­en­tial spaces are cen­tral to cre­at­ing a rea­son for stores to exist. They are a stage for prod­ucts and ser­vices,” she says. “Lin­gerie brand ThirdLove, which is all about inclu­siv­i­ty and com­fort, reimag­ined its first pop-up shop in London’s Soho through the lens of how it would make a con­sumer feel, cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence that’s less retail store and more like a liv­ing room.”

A bricks-and-mortar shift from products to services

There’s no doubt that future stores will have to pro­vide more non-phys­i­cal ser­vices above and beyond prod­uct sales. A glimpse of the future can be seen with Jeff Bezos’s lat­est gro­cery for­mat. At Ama­zon Go in Seat­tle sen­sors and track­ing mean cus­tomers can walk in the store, pur­chase and walk out again with­out queu­ing using cashier­less tech­nol­o­gy.

While Ama­zon Fresh in Los Ange­les has Alexa kiosks placed around the gro­cery store. Cus­tomers can then ask prod­uct-relat­ed ques­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions and meal inspi­ra­tions, as if they were talk­ing to a friend.

“In a time where human con­tact is still val­ued and not always viable, Ama­zon is util­is­ing its voice tech­nol­o­gy to act as a per­son­al shop­per. Going for­wards, voice tech­nol­o­gy will be embraced in future retail expe­ri­ences for this rea­son,” says Household’s Du-Prât.

“A com­plete­ly con­tact­less expe­ri­ence for con­sumers will be part of the store of the future. Just look at bio­met­rics in Chi­na. Ali­pay now allows cus­tomers to use Smile to Pay, util­is­ing facial recog­ni­tion, which means cus­tomers pay with­out touch­ing any­thing.”

The touch­less store of the future will def­i­nite­ly rely on more per­son­al­i­sa­tion using sim­i­lar tac­tics deployed online. Nike is at the fore­front of this approach. Its Berlin flag­ship boasts a giant media wall, with images, livestream­ing, social media and prod­uct infor­ma­tion. Using 3D cam­eras, in-store tech­nol­o­gy recog­nis­es shop­pers as they arrive and access­es cus­tomer data via the Nike app.

“Per­son­alised con­tent about recent­ly viewed items and stock avail­abil­i­ty is then post­ed to the media wall, with push noti­fi­ca­tions and tai­lored offers avail­able on the app and in-store,” explains Elliott Jacobs, direc­tor for agency and com­merce con­sult­ing at LiveArea. And you don’t need to touch any­thing.

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