Frictionless shopping in retail - Thematic Research

Over the last decade, consumer expectations of retailer’s ability to facilitate a quick, intuitive shopping journey have developed. The rapid growth of the online retail market has been largely driven by its ability to circumnavigate large swathes of the typical shopping experience, enabling shoppers to browse and purchase on-the-go or from the comfort of their own home. The “increasingly busy” lifestyle with which consumers often describe themselves as having, ridding as many hurdles in the shopping journey – or creating a “frictionless” experience – is becoming a vital point of differentiation for retailers worldwide. Frictionless shopping is therefore an unavoidable theme for retailers across all channels and countries. This report breaks down the seven fundamental topics within the theme, retail’s leaders and laggards in the sector, and provides an overview of relevant macroeconomic, technological and retail trends that retailers must be aware about to compete more thoroughly over the course of the next decade.

 

Scope

GlobalData breaks the frictionless shopping experience down to shopper journey type, by purchase frequency and channel, to describe how the seven major topics (ease of access, fulfilment, multichannel alignment, payment options, personalisation, positive friction security) impact consumers in a variety of scenarios. We investigate how the dominant technological, macroeconomical and retail trends are effecting frictionless shopping, and how they will go on to do so over the course of the next decade. The report goes on to profile international retailers with a significant focus on frictionless shopping, as well as provides analysis on relevant mergers, acquisitions and disruptors in the retail market.

 

Key Highlights

Frictionless shopping impacts each shopper journey differently, with broad differences between offline and online as well as infrequent and frequent purchases.

 

Better awareness of the security of customer data is vital for retailers with large online operations, as post-GDPR regulations will continue to focus on customer protection preservation.

 

Retailers must offer multiple payment options for shoppers as the range of payment possibilities diversifies

 

The success of e-tail giant Amazon has largely been based on its deference to frictionless shopping, commonly leading the way on issues such as fulfilment speed , payment options and ease of access.

 

Reasons to buy

Break down the complexity of frictionless shopping into relevant topics for your speicific business, so you can create a more dynamic and effective strategy to keep customers.

 

Understand the history of fricitonless shopping and how it continues to develop today, allowing you to grasp a wider view of changes in consumer behaviour and how it will impact your markets.

 

Explore how technological trends (such as AI, AR and 5G) are enabling retail to evolve, so you can better position yourself for long-term success.

 

Discover how the world-leading retailers, across the US, Eurozone and Asia, are investing in frictionless shopping technologies, allowing you greater clarity on which frictionless shopping techniques are proving successful and where the best investments are for greater customer retention

 

Companies mentioned

Aldi

 

Alibaba

 

Alphabet

 

Amazon

 

Apple

 

Argos

 

ASDA

 

ASOS

 

Aspectiva

 

B&Q

 

Best Buy

 

boohoo.com

 

Boots

 

Calypso AI

 

Carpetright

 

Carrefour

 

Costco

 

DFS

 

Dispatch

 

Dixons Carphone

 

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Table of Contents

Overview

 

Definition of frictionless shopping

 

Timeline

 

Trends

 

Technology trends

 

Macroeconomic trends

 

Retail trends

 

Seven frictionless shopping themes

 

Ease of access

 

Fulfilment

 

Multichannel alignment

 

Payment options ...