How retail along with technology will be the best blend

As retailers continue to digitally transform and customer demographics continue to shift toward younger generations, it’s crucial for businesses to understand their consumers. With emerging technology rapidly invading our lives, ground-breaking trends are reshaping consumers’ experience and expectations. India is one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, leading to a high growth consumer and retail market, thus presenting massive investment and business opportunities in the retail space.

Today, retail is shifting again, weaving digital into every aspect of a retailer’s operations, largely driven by retailers’ need to anticipate individual customers’ evolving desires. Additionally, over a decade of transformation has sparked a shift in consumer habits and shopping behavior. Consumers once driven by range and price are now motivated by convenience and experience.

While India is marching towards a new emerging digital ecosystem, there are already sectors such as agriculture, logistics, and healthcare which have already adopted to digital methods to engage with customers. India’s retail sector is poised for extensive digitization, with e-commerce at the forefront. According to a report by McKinsey, e-commerce has the potential to create economic value of USD 25 billion to USD 35 billion in 2025 in India’s retail sector, with the share of e-commerce gross merchandise value rising from 5 percent of trade output (wholesale and retail) to about 15 percent by 2025. Core digital sectors already constitute a large and growing portion of India’s economy and could contribute USD 355 billion to USD 435 billion of GDP in 2025.

5G, the latest generation of mobile technology, will offer speeds and bandwidth a hundred times faster than 4G. The opportunities that 5G will bring aren’t appearing out of thin air. Blending physical and virtual retail started over a decade ago as brands leveraged 4G and the boom of web 2.0 to offer in-store pick up on web orders, displaying inventory of local stores during an online search, and special offers pushed to customers phones through geolocation. These all seem like quaint ideas now but let’s not forget, each was revolutionary for its time.

In many ways, 5G will usher in the same transformation, except the catalyst will be less about simplifying and streamlining the online and physical shopping experience and more about transforming it into something that is greater than the sum of their parts. 5G’s low latency, increased bandwidth, and high speed, will allow the development of cutting-edge technology in particularly augmented reality and virtual reality.

By 2020, 100 million people would shop in-store and online using Augmented Reality (AR), enabling people to visualize products in different settings according to Market Research firm Gartner. Once technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality get powered by 5G, it would lead to numerous uses like real-time rendering for immersive videos, shorter download and set-up times along with the extension of brands and shopping experiences beyond stores. A post-digital world will put information closer than our fingertips.

Millennials are driven by experiences, which is where the focus of stores will be: 72 percent of millennials say they would like to increase their spending on experiences rather than physical items in the next year.

Given this, the post-digital era will see a return to focus on the customer experience by way of technology.  Companies that differentiate themselves through personalization, unique experiences, or a strong brand identity and ethos will be able to resonate when competing in a market where the best price and selection are expected.

By Prashant Gupta Head of Solutions South East Asia and India, Verizon