Every three years, the international retail scene meets at the EuroShop
trade fair. On a packed exhibition site, around 2,300 exhibitors from 57
nations presented the entire spectrum of stationary stores that are now
increasingly digitally oriented in 16 exhibition halls.
Digitisation: trending topic par excellence
The trending topic of the fair was digitisation. Retail is changing.
While at the last EuroShop in 2017, robots were an absolute novelty with a
cute one greeting visitors at Austrian shopfitter Umdasch’s stand,
advancing to the most photographed object at the fair, now robots could be
seen everywhere. They are supposed to keep an eye on the inventory, not
only after closing time, but also during store hours. Incorrect pricing on
products and displays and wrongly placed items is what robots are to detect
quickly and communicate in real time to the staff. “The point is to issue
instructions for immediate action, only to those people who are in the
vicinity and who have the right qualifications,” says Alexander Honigmann
of the US IT specialist Zebra Technologies Europe. And the robots never
seem threatening, they are always smaller than the humans and look somehow
cute and reserved.
Waiting in line should be avoided
While it will certainly take a while before robots conquer the retail
trade, new payment options will reach us a lot earlier. Because retail
specialists agree on one thing: There is nothing worse for consumers than a
queue at the checkout. In times of convenient online shopping and
decreasing footfalls of stationary stores, annoying queques need to be
avoided. Some retailers, mainly food stores, equip their customers with
small scanners to scan the goods during the shopping process and to pay for
them at the end. Other providers, such as German start-up Snabble that is
working with Ikea, for example, uses apps on consumers’ smartphones. Still
others, such as the start-up MishiPay, which has currently started a test
series with retailers in airports and railway stations in France, can do
without an app and works with QR codes instead. The advantage: “This type
of Scan & Go is easy for consumers and for retailers because they do not
have to invest in new hardware at the checkout point,” says Mustafa
Khanwala of MishiPay.
Artificial intelligence calculates the probability of theft
Particularly in an environment where time is of the essence,
self-checkouts make sense. Or wherever one has experienced that the time
between purchase decision and checkout is particularly critical. “We know
from the beauty industry that about 20 percent of customers on their way to
the register decide that they do not want to buy the product after all,”
explains Dr. René Schiller of GK Software. “Some retailers have therefore
started completing the purchasing process with mobile POS devices right on
the shelf.” Many retailers even presented “unmanned” store solutions, i.e.
without any sales staff. They are important for convenience stores or in
sports, for example, for events and festivals. The question of theft is
increasingly answered by artificial intelligence. “We calculate
probabilities to see what products in what combination are at risk of
theft, and then we make recommendations where surveillance might be
useful”, adds
Schiller.
Not without emotionalised shopping experiences
Stationary stores upgrade digitally wherever possible. But is that the
solution for stationary retail? Certainly not. Digitalisation is important,
but it cannot become an end in itself. Instead, the future role of retail
is quite different. It is meant to inspire, create and emotionalise
experiences and bring people together. It becomes the so-called “third
location”. “Buying is not shopping,” says Nicole Srock Stanley of Berlin’s
design agency Dan Pearlman. “Those who shop spend their free time shopping,
i.e. retail becomes a part of the leisure industry.” In the future, it will
be increasingly impossible to measure stationary retail success in terms of
how much has been purchased there. “Shopping has to become a social
experience; more and more people feel lonely – that’s exactly why
gastronomy is booming,” says Lisa Beck from design agency Atelier 522.
Store requirements are getting bigger – also for store designers. “Nobody
comes to us anymore today because they need a nice shelf,” says Tim
Greenhalgh from London-based design agency Fitch. What they are looking for
are new concepts. “72 percent of millennials would rather have a new
experience than own a new product,” says Greenhalgh. “The future belongs to
the service industry. In the last few years, it was just a side dish, now
it’s the main course.”
Flexible solutions are required
The renewal cycles for store designs have become longer, according to
the EHI Shop Monitor 2020. The last survey three years ago showed that
complete renovations in food and non-food retail happen on average every
8.7 years. It is every 9.6 years now. But that doesn’t mean that the stores
would not change. On the contrary. The design gets always outdated faster
and updates are needed at ever faster intervals. It merely no longer
requires a complete redesign. Many store designers therefore specialise in
developing shopfitting concepts that can be changed without much effort at
any time. This also applies to the lighting design as well as for product
displays and wall concepts.
This article was originally published on FashionUnited DE. Edited
and translated by Simone Preuss.
Photos: FashionUnited / Regina Henkel
