Imagine walking into the subway station after a long day at work and stopping by a grocery store that is built into the station. You browse the available products and scan the items you’d like to purchase with your phone. Your payment and order is processed via your phone, and your groceries are delivered to your house by the time you’ve finished your commute home.
Stephanie Tilenius from Google
Pretty crazy, right? Well, it’s a reality for Tesco shoppers in South Korea, according to Stephanie Tilenius, Google‘s vice president of commerce and payments, who spoke this morning at the 2011 Shop.org Annual Summit. The act of combining the mobile and bricks-and-mortar experiences resulted in Tesco moving from the No. 2 grocery retailer in South Korea to No. 1. Those results are impossible to ignore. Mobile is the way of the future.
The average mobile phone user checks his or her mobile device 40 times a day and is never more than three feet away from it. These incredible facts underscore the importance of mobile for the next mobile retail generation. These customers are Web-connected and location-aware. However, embracing mobile doesn’t mean the death of bricks-and-mortar, said Tilenius. It’s your job as a retailer to create efficiencies between online and offline so that these customers have an enriching retail experience.
How do you create these efficiencies? Retailers including Home Depot, Walmart and Best Buy already have embraced order online/pick-up in-store strategies, while retailers such as Nordstrom are using iPads to provide sales associates with more information about in-store customers and their latest purchases.
Tilenius stressed the importance of optimizing mobile sites and adding rich content as a sales driver. On-site curators and tastemakers that personalize recommendations help initiate a new dialogue with loyal customers. Retailers also can offer store maps, coupons and recipes via mobile for consumers who are in stores. Better yet, they can offer mobile payment as a self-checkout option, so that customers don’t even have to stand in line when they’re in the stores.
Google’s role in this integration of mobile and bricks-and-mortar comes in the form of Google Wallet, Google Offers and Google + and other platforms. The company also has launched Google Catalogs, a product search that features curated sets of products as an interactive browse-based experience.
One final scenario from Tilenius to consider while you ponder your own role in this new wave of retail features: A customer walks into a Gap seeking a pair of jeans. She finds the right style, but not the correct size. With her mobile device, she scans the NFC tag attached to the garment, selects the correct size and places an order. The next day, the customer’s jeans, in the correct size, is delivered on her doorstep. That’s a win/win for both retailers, who get to keep the sale, and a shopper, who is able to buy the product she wants.