US Edition 
Omnichannel retail trends are setting the shopping style
Thanks to omnichannel retailing, including developments in both offline and online shopping, the high street is creating a seamless experience for consumers
It’s set to be another bumper season for retailers as UK shoppers spend more than ever this Christmas. According to statistics from the Centre for Retail Research, commissioned by vouchercodes.co.uk owner RetailMeNot, retail spending will hit £74bn during the festive season, boosted by initiatives such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Manic Monday. Approximately 23pc of this spending, about £17bn, will be online, claims the research. And a growing proportion of e-commerce sales will be over mobile devices. An estimated 29.8pc of online Christmas sales will be via tablets and smartphones (more than £2.1bn spent using web tablets, £3bn on smartphones).
Retailers are increasingly optimistic. The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) surveyed senior e-commerce professionals and found 85pc are expecting sales growth of more than 10pc this year, while 45pc are forecasting growth of 20pc or more. Confidence is particularly strong among pure-play retailers (who only sell online), where 97pc expect growth above 10pc.
According to Giulio Montemagno, senior vice president of international business at RetailMeNot, mobile is increasingly important for retailers. “With shoppers spending 23 pence of every pound online, retailers must ensure they are appealing to consumers through mobile and tablet devices. In such a retail environment, it’s important that retailers have a solid mobile strategy in place to target shoppers as they shop online or in-store.”
Indeed, it’s the convenience of shopping on mobile devices alongside click-and-collect (around 17pc of internet retail sales will be collected by customers in 2015, according to research group Mintel) which is fuelling the emerging trend for last-minute online Christmas purchases. IMRG’s survey reveals that 75pc of multichannel retailers now offer alternative delivery methods (click-and-collect, reserve-and-collect) over Christmas, while 20pc boast in-store ordering. Only two in five pureplays will offer such delivery methods.
Says IMRG’s chief information officer Tina Spooner: “This year, convenience will be key in attracting the lucrative Christmas shoppers, and retailers who offer a range of delivery options are likely to be the winners.”
The most common last order date for standard delivery before Christmas is expected to be December 19, and December 22 for premium delivery. According to IMRG’s research, 22pc of retailers will be offering intime premium delivery for shoppers ordering as late as December 23. Currys PC World is even taking orders for home delivery on Christmas Eve morning for certain postcodes. “People are increasingly comfortable leaving their Christmas shopping later and later,” says Giles Longhurst, general manager for consumer insight and data firm Experian.
For Mintel’s director of retail research, Richard Perks, the growth in online shopping has proved a massive boost to bricks-andmortar retailers. “Our figures show, for example, that only around 5pc of total clothing sales are through a pure-play online service, approximately the same as when mail order companies dominated the market in the 1990s.”
In other words, most of the growth in online clothing retail sales has come through existing bricks-and-mortar retailers, reckons Mintel.
Although online sales account for an increasing proportion of total sales (particularly in the electrical sector), around 53pc of total online sales are still via the high-street stores. One of the advantages that traditional retailers have over pure-play retailers is their brand and their stores, says Mr Perks. “If you are a pureplay retailer, you have to spend a lot on marketing to gain market share which means your prices aren’t necessarily cheaper than bricks-and-mortar retailers.” Adds Andrew McClelland, chief operations and policy officer, IMRG: “It’s not either online or offline. We shop as we need to and as time dictates. There are times when we like to go to the shops and times when we prefer to shop online.”
For retailers, the key to success is “omnichannel retailing”. This integrated strategy gives customers the best possible opportunities to shop both online and offline through initiatives such as price matching and click-and-collect at the same time as making sure the “back-end” platform gives retailers full insight into stock and the individual customer.
Says Suzi Spink, chief executive of fashion high-street chain East: “What omni is to us is like the old Martini slogan: any time, any place, anywhere. We see it as meaning a single-stock view and a single-customer view.” Adds Mr McClelland: “The challenge for retailers is to offer a consistent service to consumers at the same time as making it work behind the scenes.”
Recent examples of a more integrated online and offline approach include the partnership between Argos and eBay to collect eBay products in Argos stores, and also the new “click-and-commute” service from John Lewis at its recently opened store in London’s St Pancras station. While the store is smaller than other John Lewis outlets (3,000 sq feet), it provides an ideal hub where customers can order products, collect those bought online as well as carry out returns from online or offline purchases. “We’ve had to think carefully about what we stock,” says Maggie Porteous, director of selling, John Lewis. “But everything we don’t physically have in stock we can get for our customers, because it really is a truly omnichannel retail experience.”
According to Mike Crooks, development director of MiBeacons at mobile apps and consultancy company Mubaloo, more retailers are embracing omnichannel retailing, integrating back-end systems so they have a complete view of a customer’s online and offline experience. They are also looking at ways to use technology to enrich a customer’s in-store experience. For example, last month Mubaloo worked with a retailer in Westfield Shopping Centre in London’s White City to showcase its latest products.
Explains Mr Crooks: “We used separate beacons to give customers information, complete with video and descriptions, about 22 different products via a mobile phone app.” Mubaloo is also involved in a project with Microsoft and Tesco to use MiBeacons to help the blind find items in a store using voice-activated technology on their mobile phone. Says Paul Wilkinson, head of technology research, Tesco Labs: “What’s really exciting about this is how we can use technology to enhance the lives of customers, not just those that are visually impaired, but everybody, through giving them a more personalised shopping experience.”