Retailers are working to create personalized, compelling and consistent brand messaging across channels.
A new report from Boston Retail Partners (BRP) has revealed that 56% of retailers have named creating a consistent brand experience across all channels their top digital priority.
According to the BRP 2016 Digital Commerce Survey, retailers understand that consumers expect a personalized, seamless experience wherever, whenever and however they shop and they are focused on delivering a unified experience.
“Today’s unified commerce imperative moves the heart of the transaction to a centralized platform,” said Jeffrey Neville, vice president at BRP. “This allows retailers to become more innovative and agile with their digital commerce offerings to further enable a personalized customer experience. It is promising to see that retailers are laser focused on delivering the seamless, cross-channel experience consumers expect.”
BRP’s 2016 Digital Commerce Survey of top North American retailers offers insights into retailers’ current digital commerce priorities and initiatives as the digital and physical worlds converge to facilitate a seamless experience across channels.
The key digital commerce trends driving today’s initiatives are:
Personal – Effectively engaging customers requires retailers to offer personalized, relevant, compelling and consistent brand messaging across channels.
- 40% are focused on improving personalization as a top digital priority
- 50% will have customer identifying technology within the store in two years
- 58% plan to utilize geolocation within two years
Ubiquitous – Heightened customer expectations for a personalized, seamless experience necessitates that retailers have the ability to follow the customer’s journey as she shops across and among channels.
- 46% are improving the mobile shopping experience as a top digital priority
- 75% will host a single shared cart across channels within three years
- 50% will offer “start anywhere, finish anywhere” within five years
Unified – Retailers’ organization and infrastructure need to be unified and aligned across channels to offer a seamless and consistent customer experience.
- 56% are focused on a consistent brand experience across channels as a top digital priority
- 73% plan to utilize an OMS at the center of their unified commerce platform within three years
- 38% are adding new roles and employee initiatives to accommodate omni-channel tasks
The 2016 Digital Commerce Survey platinum sponsor is NetSuite and the gold sponsors are EarthLink, Manhattan Associates, Orckestra, Radial and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
