Attributed to Khong Sheau Yan, Head of Portfolio Consumer Experience, Fujitsu Asia Pacific The retail industry is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by technological advancements and evolving consumer expectations. Now more than even, retailers need to be responsive, agile and innovative.
One of the most important priorities is to focus on creating a frictionless experience for your customers at every touch point. In fact, 69% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase from a brand that personalises experiences across their channels. Delivering connected, seamless customer experiences, both online and offline, is more important than ever. This is necessary to retain and grow customer loyalty and market share. According to Kasikorn Research Center, Thailand retail sales volume this year would be 3% expanded from last year to 4.1 trillion baht.
Retailers are asking us now more than ever: “How do we achieve frictionless customer experience?” The answer lies in three essentials for retailers undergoing digital transformation:
Unified omnichannel with integrated inventory management for a consistent customer experience.
Customers interact with brands through a range of channels, such as storefronts, e-commerce websites, mobile applications, and social media platforms. To support rising customer expectations, it is necessary to use a unified approach across all channels. This ensures that communication with customers is continuous and frictionless.
Fujitsu has observed that Thai retailers are increasingly embracing digital technologies to expand their reach and engage customers. This includes building omnichannel platforms, such as online stores, mobile apps, and call-to-order services. They are also partnering with online marketplaces like Lazada, Shopee, and Facebook, and implementing online-to-offline (O2O) strategies such as “Call and Shop” and “Chat and Shop.” Live commerce – selling products live online, especially on social media, has become particularly popular and is now a major channel for online sales. To maximize sales opportunities, retailers need to create a seamless purchasing experience across all platforms.
An example in Thailand that Fujitsu has observed is The Mall Group, one of Thailand’s largest retail conglomerates. The Mall Group has implemented self-checkouts at its newest center, Empshere to reduce wait times and improve convenience for customers. It has also introduced “Call and Shop” and “Call to Order” services to better cater to customers’ preferences for a personalized and seamless customer experience. Moreover, The Mall Group has recently launched Mniverse, Thailand’s first metaverse shopping environment. This innovative and immersive experience allows customers to enjoy a range of activities in the virtual world, such as streaming movies, playing 3D games, and shopping online with products delivered to their doors.
We have also seen this done effectively with another Thai retail conglomerate, The Central Retail Corporation Public Company Limited (CRC). CRC has developed an omnichannel strategy that seamlessly integrates its online and offline presence. Customers can browse products online, check in-store availability, and choose either to pick up their purchases at a physical store or have them delivered. This approach provides a consistent customer experience across different platforms, enhancing convenience and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This strategy is part of CRC’s broader digital transformation efforts to remain competitive in the retail market. Moreover, CRC has also implemented advanced AI technologies to enhance its customer loyalty programs across its diverse retail and service portfolio. Central Retail’s AI-powered personalization approaches include the Central The1Card loyalty program, predictive analytics for product recommendations, dynamic pricing, and customer engagement via social media and apps.
Fujitsu shares a similar mindset in implementing modern touchpoints to improve customer satisfaction. By embracing solutions such as self-checkout, mobile Point-of-Sale (POS), and self-scanning with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), retailers can drastically reduce wait times and improve convenience for shoppers.
In addition, the introduction of new shopping methods like Buy Online Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) and cross-branch purchasing (with home delivery in case of inventory shortages), is another example of seamlessly integrating the online and offline retail channels to transform shopping experiences.
A unified omni-channel platforms allows retailers to streamline their inventory management, forecast demand, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. This will help prevent missed sales opportunities due to stock shortages and avoid overstocking, which can negatively impact cash flow. An integrated inventory management platform ensures businesses fulfil customer orders efficiently, regardless of where they purchase the product, creating a consistent and efficient shopping experience.
These innovative retail solutions provide retailers the capability to deliver a consistent and context-specific experience across all their channels, so their customers can enjoy a frictionless experience. This in turn assists in stimulating repeat business and an improved bottom line for the retailer – the ultimate win-win-win.
Driving customer loyalty with AI-powered personalisation.
Imagine walking into a store and instantly finding everything you need. Even better, what if the entire store was curated based on your preferences? In this ever-evolving, highly competitive retail landscape, the success of a retail brand depends on fostering meaningful relationships. This means making customers feel understood and valued.
With the power of AI and predictive analytics, retailers can curate relevant products and tailor personalised recommendations for each customer, based on their personal preferences, browsing habits, purchase histories. Through personalisation, retailers can provide its customers with a unique and seamless experience at every point to improve their shopping experience.
Today’s technology enables retailers to offer real-time promotions that are tailored to customers’ shopping habits. One effective solution is self-scanning with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). It allows retailers to identify when customers are in-store and deliver promotions instantaneously based on preferences and past purchases. This will help drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In addition, AI-powered solutions can help retailers optimise their product prices in real time, taking both internal and external conditions such as demand, competition, pricing sensitivity, and weather into account. A smart pricing strategy can not only help businesses maximise their margins, but also enhance customer experiences and business operations by stabilising demand.
Harnessing AI to elevate in-store experiences
There is no doubt that AI is transforming every aspect of the retail industry. Retailers can elevate in-store retail experience using AI video analysis technology to learn and analyse customer behaviours. This technology can capture accurately the number of customers in-store on an hourly basis to help identify peak hours for staff capacity planning. In addition, it can capture and analyse customer foot traffic and their interactions with the products. Retailers can then use this data-driven analysis to optimise store layout and product placement objectively, ensuring aisles are easily navigable and accessible for customers. This would attract more customers to the store, encourage them to browse longer, and expose them to more products, improving customer satisfaction and ultimately driving sales for the business.
For example, Fujitsu has collaborated with a major retailer to help transform its customer experience, through an AI-based camera system to analyse customer behaviour, foot traffic and dwell time to provide business intelligence for better decision-making. The AI camera system can detect customers who may need help in choosing products and notify store staff to provide timely customer service, which improves both staff efficiency and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, this system also helps prevent under-aged customers from purchasing alcoholic beverages by estimate of the customers’ age from video data. This technology has been deployed to over 100 stores, with a 30% increase in sales and customer number.
Fujitsu has foreseen upcoming opportunities for retail businesses in Thailand to leverage the power of technology to increase competitiveness. These include using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze customer needs and spending behaviors, implementing intelligent inventory management, and utilizing automation, such as self-service payment systems and robots to assist in operations. Additionally, the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) is creating the most realistic purchasing experiences. Moreover, the adoption of cloud technology is reducing IT infrastructure management costs, and data science is being used to analyze complex data for future planning.
These digital innovations are providing retailers with the capability to deliver a consistent and context-specific experience across all their channels, so their customers can enjoy a frictionless experience. This in turn will drive growth for retailers.
