Top Retail Trends: Strengthen your Business with Extended Reality, AI and more

• Community Live Advice: customers become product advisors in the online store
• Extended reality: Emotional and interactive product presentations with VR and AR
• Instead of an app or customer card: how digital wallet passes enable online-to-offline tracking
• Local online marketplaces: More visibility for brick-and-mortar retailers
• Bringing online and offline retail together with digital signage
• Being where the customer is: brands and retailers together in the omni-seller marketplace

There are customers who are so familiar with individual product categories or brands that they could also use their knowledge to advise other customers. Such advice would even be particularly credible: "88% of consumers trust recommendations from other customers rather than marketing statements," says Jutta Stienen, Head of Marketing at Guuru Solutions, quoting a study by the market research company Nielsen. Guuru therefore looked for a way for brands to use the knowledge and enthusiasm of their own community for product advice in the online store.

Guuru has developed an AI-based chat tool that is integrated into online stores and allows customers to chat in real time with product advisors from the community (known as Guurus). Jutta Stienen explains how the tool works:

• The tool uses AI to recognize customer requests and decides whether to forward them to a Guuru or the regular customer service.
• Guurus, i.e. passionate fans and real product users of the brand, receive pop-up notifications about requests.
• Whoever accepts the request first takes over the consultation and is rewarded with a voucher or commission.

Stephan Buschmann, Director Customer Service B2C & B2B at Jack Wolfskin, has been using the tool in his online store for around a year and is adding to it:

• 54 Guurus from the community were selected and given further training.
• The consultations often last 30 to 40 minutes, which would be difficult to cover in normal customer service.

For Buschmann, the tool is an ideal addition to existing measures:

• Jack Wolfskin has always relied on close ties through events and involving customers in product development.
• The community as advisors is a natural and logical step to deepen customer loyalty.

The digital technologies virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have long been predicted to revolutionize retail in the coming years. While VR involves moving around in closed environments into which you are immersed using VR glasses, AR enriches the real environment with additional information. This is mainly done via the displays of smartphones, which are now all AR-capable. Expensive hardware is therefore no longer necessary, which means that the technology has overcome an important entry hurdle.

The Viennese company Svarmony Technology is one of the pioneers of these future technologies and has been working in this field for ten years, including for Porsche, Siemens, Mediamarkt and the German Museum.

The possibilities of VR and AR are wide-ranging. Carsten Szameitat, Chief Revenue Officer at Svarmony, explains some of the areas of application:

• Product try-on: with AR, customers* can try on products such as jewelry or glasses virtually and see how they look on their own body.
• Apps are no longer necessary. The image from the catalog becomes a physical experience. Advantage: Returns can be reduced as the right size can be better estimated.
• Product training and education: Companies can offer onboarding processes and product training for new team members via AR.
• Repair and maintenance: AR supports sustainable services by digitally guiding customers in self-repair (e.g. when replacing a bicycle inner tube).
• Technical advantage: An NFC chip in the product communicates with the smartphone to recognize the model and the appropriate components.

AR for retailers and manufacturers:

• Space planning: retailers can use AR to visualize the placement of products and optimize walking routes.
• Product development: By collaborating with manufacturers worldwide, products can be developed without the need to ship physical prototypes or travel.

The topic of navigation is also far from exhausted. While head-up displays are already being used successfully in cars, they could still have great potential in sport. "It would be great if your ski goggles could display the route you want to take while you're skiing," says Szameitat.

Many companies invest in apps, loyalty cards and vouchers made of plastic or paper to communicate with their customers and increase customer loyalty. However, these systems have significant disadvantages:

• Many people do not want to install an app from every brand on their smartphone.
• Customer cards are often cumbersome and not issued quickly.
• Cards and vouchers are often lost or forgotten.
• The result: a patchy purchase history and limited informative value for retailers.

Passcreator by Fobi has been active in the field of customer loyalty for over twelve years and works with a wide range of companies in more than 40 markets - including beach cafés, insurance companies, fashion brands and even ticket sales for the Oscars.

With digital membership cards that can be stored in Apple or Google Wallet at the click of a button, Passcreator offers new possibilities for online-to-offline tracking. Alexander Hell, Head of Business Development & Strategy at Passcreator, explains the advantages:

• Cheaper than apps: Wallet passes offer extensive customer loyalty functions, but are more cost-efficient than developing an app.
• Support for the entire customer journey: they interact with social media, posters or digital signage
• Better tracking: "Tracking is a challenge in brick-and-mortar retail," says Hell. With the Wallet Pass, retailers can track where their customers come from and which advertising measures brought them into the store.

Other possible applications:

• Simplify pick-up processes: products purchased online can be picked up efficiently in-store.
• Push notifications: Customers receive reminders to use the Wallet Pass via beacons in the checkout area.

Example Scotch & Soda: The Dutch fashion chain switched completely from paper cards to digital wallet passes and was able to increase the proportion of trackable purchases in stationary retail from 7-8% to 40%.

Gift cards and vouchers:

• Wallet passes are ideal as digital vouchers or discount cards.
• They can be issued via QR code and scanned in-store - without any additional effort for customers or retailers.

Although many people still prefer to store in-store rather than online, the reality is often different. It is often simply more convenient to store online and have the products sent to your home than to look for a retailer in town.

However, the growing market share of online retail is having a serious impact on the attractiveness of our city centers. Oliver Bock, Managing Director of local marketplace operator Findeling, wants to help bricks-and-mortar retailers to be found by customers. "Findeling offers the opportunity to make all retailers in a city visible in one app," says Oliver Bock.

To be able to use Findeling, stores have to register in the app and can advertise their business, individual products or brands there. In turn, customers can use the app to find out which retailers are in their neighborhood. They can subscribe to newsletters from their favorite stores and are informed directly when there are special offers. Online purchases are also possible.

Findeling's current reach:

• Active in 33 countries, 35 cities and 239 regions (e.g. Lucerne, Hamburg, Berlin, Dublin and Porto).
• Over 2,800 retailers are already registered on the platform.
• In major cities, the service works with integrated route guidance.

In the next step, Findeling wants to support retailers with local support teams so that they can present themselves optimally on the platform and develop further, for example by offering live shopping formats. "If we understand that the individual retailer is not alone, we can create real added value. We can only do this together," Bock is convinced.

Many brick-and-mortar retailers invest a lot of time and money in their online store, but still make most of their sales in-store. The technology company Remira has developed a digital signage solution for the multi-brand chain store Pier 14 so that the stores can also benefit from the detailed product descriptions, high-quality product images and ultimately the entire online range. Pier 14 operates 15 multi-brand and franchise stores along the Baltic coast, with a focus on fashion and sports ranges.

"Pier 14 has its own online store, its own photo studio and prepares the product data very well. But this information is only used by five percent of customers," says Leander Juschkewitsch, Senior Consultant Business Development at Remira. In order to make this valuable information accessible to all customers and also available to sales staff, screens were installed in the stores that present products and mood images in a continuous loop, which the retailer has previously defined and which are automatically adjusted in real time depending on the weather. In addition, all products in the range have been equipped with RFID technology. When customers approach a screen with a product, the products are recognized and the corresponding information is displayed. The screen can also be used to request advice in the store or purchase the product. The checkout process then runs via the online store and the goods can be sent home if desired.

Advantages for the retailer:

• Retailers find out where their stationary customers come from, as the majority of them are tourists.
• Previously anonymous customers can now be integrated into your own marketing channels and turned into existing customers.
• The system is intuitive to use and requires no training.
• It can be easily expanded to any number of stores.
• It is particularly suitable for retailers who already have high-quality online stores and generate the majority of their sales in their stores.

With the idea of the omni-seller marketplace, the company Locally wants to usher in a new era in retail. Currently, the distribution channels between wholesalers and direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses are usually strictly separated, which has led to brands and retailers becoming competitors. This can lead to conflicts. What if brands and retailers were partners in the mission to meet customers exactly where they are - online, in-store or both at the same time? Mike Massey, CEO of Locally, explains:

Brands are to become a universal retail hub where all product information comes together. This also includes the product ranges of stationary retailers and online platforms, the availability of which is displayed in real time. This allows customers to decide for themselves whether they want to make a quick trip to the store and take a look at the product or order it online. Even if certain sizes or colors are no longer available online, there may still be retailers who have the product they are looking for in stock. "Brands do not refer to retailers in their DTC channels who still have a product in stock if a size they are looking for is already sold out in the web store. They don't want to weaken their own DTC channel at any cost and accept that customers will go to Google or Amazon," says Eoin Comerford, Head of Outsize Consulting and ex-CEO of Moosejaw.

Eoin Comerford's solution:

• Better to become a marketplace for your own brand.
• Brands should use a standardized shopping cart technology on their website and offer additional services.
• Retailers benefit as their product ranges are integrated into a broader network, increasing their visibility and sales opportunities.

Locally stands for a completely channel-independent approach, for collaboration instead of competition. "Instead of omni-channel and multi-channel, we are going back to one-channel: To the onmi-seller market place."