Retail Shopping Challenges

The article on "Major challenges faced by retail stores" reports on how ecommerce is growing rapidly and is more preferred than retail stores nowadays. In order to attract customers, retail stores need to create new multi-sensory experiences such as workshops and other activities that give customers a hands-on experience. Retail stores should collaborate with startups that analyze customers' journeys and shopping habits. Besides, they should provide barrier-free and streamlined shopping experiences to customers. Pop-up stores can showcase new or extraordinary products in physical shops, thus creating buzz and encouraging more sales. With the help of technology, stores should unify brand experiences and multiply touchpoints with consumers.

With the help of certain startups, ecommerce can easily track down the shopping habits of customers. Ecommerce can personalize customers' online shopping experience by displaying more of the customers' favorite items, increasing sales directly as customers are more likely to spend on favorite products. However, there is a way for retail stores to counter this problem. UK companies such as Waitrose and Boots have tried to come up with new schemes that allow customers to select a few specific favorite items that they would like to receive discounts on for every visit to the store. The Pick Your Own Offers scheme increases customer loyalty by allowing Waitrose loyalty cardholders to choose 10 products that they would like to get a 20% discount on. (Tugby,

Some people find shopping and queuing up a leisure activity which helps to kill time and reduce stress. A study by TNS Global reported that half of Americans have engaged in retail therapy, which helps improve mood and relieve stress. (HuffPost, 2017) Retail stores can also utilize technology to allow customers to pay using debit and credit cards in order to provide a hassle-free shopping experience. On another note, shopping online can incur extra shipping costs on purchasers. Online purchases may also fall short of consumers' expectations, and it is very troublesome to return the goods to the suppliers. In order to allow customers to make prompt payment, many retailers, both online and offline, have choose to implement debit and credit cards into their systems. According to an article in Huffington Post, 94 percent of transactions made with debit or credit cards are in retail stores while 6 percent of them take place online. Thus, this proves that barrier-free payment is not necessarily a huge challenge to retail stores. (New,