Lessons Retailers Can Learn from the Growing Customer Journey

To understand the evolving customer journey, retailers must prioritize diversity and sustainability, safety, inclusion, equity, and data. For the retail industry to remain innovative and relevant, brands should acknowledge emerging consumers and their shifting demands.

To stay ahead of the competition, retailers must understand the complexity of new shopping habits that have emerged as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lessons from the Consumer Journey Report

A recent consumer journey analysis released by Women's Wear Daily in collaboration with American Express, industry experts, and retail industry leaders offers a number of tips on how retailers and brands can offer and maintain a robust shopper experience. Retailers can integrate these recommendations in their strategies by:

1. Acknowledging the Consumer Journey

Consumers have had to change their habits and reevaluate the conventional shopping journey. EY’s Future Consumer Index states that 80% of consumers have changed their shopping habits.

According to Americas EY consumer retail head Jeff Orschell, distribution and shopping mediums are starting to fade as they adopt new convenient practices. Retailers must thus consider new purchasing habits. Orschell continues to take into account customers who want to shop online and pick up at the store later, customers who prefer to shop in person, and customers who use social shopping apps.

2. Meeting Customers Where They Are

Customer expectations and demands have been evolving way before the prevailing pandemic. Retailers must strive to meet and satisfy customer demands in person, online, and on social media platforms.

Marcie Merriman, America’s EY customer strategy and cultural insights head, believes customers today expect a personalized and smooth shopping experience that merges their lifestyles. Retailers will need to invest in proper infrastructure and technology that promote a consumer-based shopping experience at every touchpoint. 

3. Leveraging Analytics and Data to Listen to Consumers

One of the key ways retailers can conform to the advancing consumer journey is by leveraging analytics and data to identify behaviors and patterns. UNTUCKit, a shirt brand, uses analytics, artificial intelligence, and data to best adhere to their customers’ needs.

According to the company’s vice president, Alberto Corral, utilizing technology during the pandemic has allowed the company to adapt to working from home with ease. 

4. Implementing Effective Safety Measures

As things slowly return to normal, stores are going over and beyond to welcome back customers to physical shopping and guarantee them safety. Vaccine mandates, sanitation efforts, contactless payments, and mask wearing are some of the efforts retailers are making to protect customers and employees.

Safety is not only about personal health, but it is also about data protection. With the increased usage of technology at the checkout nowadays, consumers want to know their information is secure and safe.

A recent retail security survey discovered that security issues like structured retail crime reports were high in 2020. To halt the increasing fraud cases, retailers should adopt suitable systems to ensure that in-store and online checkout is fraud-proof and frictionless. 

Sweet Tips from Ally

To gain a competitive edge in the industry, retailers must understand the evolving customer journey. With proper feedback, they can understand their customers’ needs and identify the best ways to offer them a unique experience.