Shopper tech attitudes ‘pushing retail change’

The changing attitudes of consumers towards a more technology-driven experience means that retailers cannot afford to delay in adopting new solutions, a new Oracle survey has claimed.

The research, which surveyed more than 15,000 people across EMEA, North America, Latin America and Australia and China, found that 42 per cent of consumers are now shopping both online and in-store every week, while 73 per cent want to return their online purchases to a retail store.

When discussing which in-store features they liked, 56 per cent of consumers described self-checkout machines as important to them, 65 per cent noted Click and Collect, and 60 per cent wanted in-store mobile payment options.

Almost half of respondents said that they would like to use virtual reality at home to navigate a personalised in-store experience and receive home delivery, while 48 per cent would use virtual reality to prepared a curated wardrobe to be picked up in-store. Millennials (42 per cent) and families (43 per cent) showed the greatest interest in delivery by driverless car or drone.

With regards to personalisation, 67 per cent of consumers stated that they did not want to set up an account for e-commerce checkout, while one in three consumers find offers based on social media data creepy. Over half of respondents want personalised offers in-store based on personal data from their store loyalty account.

Jeff Warren, vice president of strategy at Oracle Retail, said: “As consumers reinforce these trends through purchase behaviour, cloud infrastructure will play a more critical role by delivering innovation faster and enabling the retail community to keep pace with existing expectations and experiences.

“What continues to be true is the rising expectations anticipated evolution of a fully omnichannel shopping experience. Retailers can’t afford to delay adopting cloud solutions that enable a single perspective of consumer behaviour across offline and online storefronts.”

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