Most consumers in France, Germany, the UK and the US are willing to try new digital channels for shopping and prefer to receive their online orders at home, a new study from Periscope by McKinsey revealed.
The survey entitled “The Future of Shopping: connected, virtual and augmented” highlights the speed with which cross-channel retail is evolving, with 70% of shoppers being willing to try cross-channel shopping methods.
The research showed that 60% or more of consumers in Germany, the UK and US engage equally with online and offline shopping channels, suggesting that multichannel is certainly becoming the new norm. Only France (35%) was lagging behind the trend, with 44% saying they primarily or only shop in stores.
Despite this surge in multichannel behaviour, 50% of consumers in all countries surveyed did the bulk of their shopping in-store last year. Computers are the second most popular method for shoppers in France, Germany, and the UK. However, in the US, the immediacy of smartphone shopping (19%) has caught up with the popularity of the computer (19%).
When it comes to delivery of online purchases, home delivery was the top option for most respondents in all countries surveyed, and particularly so for German shoppers (83%). All shoppers named efficiency as the top reason when choosing a delivery option, followed closely by out-of-hours availability in Germany, the UK and the US.
The second most popular choice for shoppers in the US (40%) and the UK (39%) was in-store pickup, the so-called “click&collect” service. Meanwhile, the convenience of collecting goods from a local pick-up point resonated particularly well with consumers in France (51%).
Respondents said their top reason for selecting the pick-up option was to avoid waiting at home for delivery. This was followed by the indication of more reliable delivery timing in all countries besides the US, where consumers were more concerned about checking the product and the quantity of items delivered.
In the future, more consumers are planning to pick up their purchases in-store. An impressive number of shoppers in France (81%), the US (78%), the UK (77%) and Germany (59%) say they are definitely likely to take advantage of ‘click and collect’ in-store services to improve their shopping experience.
Consumers are also getting increasingly interested in new virtual and augmented technologies enabling them to interact digitally within the physical store environment to address immediate needs and preferences. Over 60% of consumers in all countries surveyed had yet to encounter VR or AR applications in-store, yet the majority had future plans to use a virtual shelf for a number of activities that they say would improve their in-store shopping experience.
Respondents in all countries favoured the touch screen or smart ‘virtual shelf’ which gives consumers visiting stores fast fingertip access to the entire product portfolio, while also supporting features they’re already familiar with from online retail.
Browsing products was the top use-case for respondents in France (65%), the US (64%) and the UK (59%), followed closely by receiving similar product recommendations (US 59%, France 58%, UK 54%). For German consumers, browsing products (54%) and getting similar product recommendations (54%) scored equally high as the top application choice.
Interestingly, the convenience of being able to use a branded virtual shelf outside a store’s location to make purchases held a universally strong appeal for consumers in the US (58%), France (55%), the UK (54%) and Germany (46%).
As for payment, more and more consumers plan to use mobile payment options when shopping in-store in the future. For future use of mobile payments, US consumers lead the way with 65% saying they are definitely/probably likely to opt for making payments at the cashier with their smartphones. They were followed closely by UK (61%), French (53%) and German (52%) shoppers.
Similarly, consumers expressed a particularly strong interest in using their phones to scan-pay-go in the future – thus avoiding the need to go through a cashier point. Once again, US consumers (60%) are most eager to embrace this option, but a significant number of consumers in the UK (55%), Germany (49%) and France (48%) also plan to use this method.
Despite embracing digital innovations for a better shopping experience, consumers are concerned about how these innovations could impact privacy and security. For example, having in-store movements tracked was the top security concern for German (43%) and UK (39%) consumers. In the US, the top concern was the need to surrender phone and email information (38%). In France, the biggest concern was putting payment card information online (47%), which came second in Germany (40%) and the US (37%).
“Consumers are eager to embrace innovations in retail technologies and demanding more from retailers,” Brian Elliott, Partner and Head of Innovation at Periscope By McKinsey, said. “In-store experiences are getting a new lease on life, and for those retailers able to bridge their online and offline channels in a way that consumers can seamlessly interact with will be the winners. The real challenge for retailers is learning how to personalize the experience for individual consumers by powering cross channel analytics using the data available to them, without neglecting customers’ security and privacy.”
The survey was conducted among 2,624 consumers in France, Germany, UK and the US. The Periscope By McKinsey platform offers marketing and sales analytics solutions for companies.
