Re-imagining the in-store Digital Retail Experience

Reimagining the in-store
Digital Retail Experience
Creating a strategy for integrated in-store retail
Author: Tery Spataro

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Analysis
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Performance
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Refreshing
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Retention
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Reaching
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2.What
customersneed
© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.
Reimagining the in-store Digital Retail Experience
!
Reimagining the in-store Digital
Retail Experience
Creating a strategy for integrated in-store retail
Contents
Introduction: What’s In-store?...............................................................4
About the Author....................................................................................................................5
Setting the Stage...................................................................................................................5
About our Re-imagining the in-store Digital Retail Experience guide....................................6
How will the guide help me? .................................................................................................6
Who is the guide written for?.................................................................................................6
What does this guide include?...............................................................................................6
Step 1: Analysis to uncover opportunities and challenges................9
In the Spotlight.....................................................................................................................10
What to think about..............................................................................................................13
What did you learn from this exercise?................................................................................16
In the Spotlight – CloudTags NFC integration in-store.........................................................17
Step 2: What do your customers need?..............................................20
Applying models of shopper behaviour to redesign experiences.........................................22
In the Spotlight:....................................................................................................................26
What to think about:.............................................................................................................28
Step 3: Define the retail digital experience.........................................31
Aligning consumer behaviors with experience design.........................................................32
In the Spotlight:....................................................................................................................34
What to think about – applying the Experience path template.............................................35

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Analysis
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Performance
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Step 4: Reaching across the aisle.......................................................37
In the Spotlight.....................................................................................................................39
Step 5: Reinvigorating Retention.........................................................43
In the Spotlight.....................................................................................................................47
What to think about – redefining the relationship during retention.......................................48
Step 6: Performance tracking and evaluating....................................49
In the Spotlight – Face detection technologies....................................................................54
What to Think About – the in-store experience measurement template..............................60
Step 7: Refreshing.................................................................................63
In the Spotlight:....................................................................................................................66
What to Think About – resources for experience and content management.......................68
Cashing out..........................................................................................................................69
Additional Smart Insights tools ............................................................................................70
Sources:...............................................................................................................................70
Images:................................................................................................................................71

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Introduction
What’s In-store?
“Consumers are ‘center stage’ in their relationships with retailers. The idea that a bricks
and mortar store can simply “pile it high and sell” are increasingly waning. The in-store
experience needs to compliment and work with the e-commerce experience by adding
a sense of magic and hyper personalization that is so perfect to each individual that it
can’t be found elsewhere. Retail needs to be the theater!”
Nelson Freitas, Chief Strategy Officer, Wunderman.
THE DIGITAL FUTURE OF RETAIL, MERCHANDISING MATTERS, 2014
Does the word quagmire resonate with you when you think about the overwhelming
changes in retail? The omni-channel can be a quagmire. We have seen tremendous change
occurring in retail fueled by changes in consumer technology. As consumers become more
techno-savvy, the demand to transfer and infuse this behavior into the retail experience will
become the norm.
Digital technologies inspired new visions for stimulating engagement with customers while
helping customers move along their purchasing journey. E-commerce left some retailers
scratching their heads on what to do, with many questioning whether the Internet was just a
fad. To safeguard against the potential risk of the Internet being just a fad, some marketers
chose to treat e-commerce as a separate sales opportunity rather than risk intertwining
e-commerce with brick and mortar. Digital entrepreneurs took another route, building
elaborate online malls that catered to a customer’s every need without ever needing to go to
a physical location. Gradually, adoption and acceptance of e-commerce took over.
We are observing another technological shift in the retail experience. Mobile inspired
customers on the go to make easy online transactions. This inspiration has led to forward-
thinking devices like Square and eliminating clunky cash registers that take up retail space.

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These technology shifts have caused great disruption but have also led to innovation.
The customer that is demanding the most from these technological shifts is the Millennial
customer. They are telling us what to expect from upcoming generations. As retailers, we
need to prepare and think about both the short-term and long-term future of retail.
The Smart Insights Guide “Reimagining the in-store Digital Retail Experience:” is here to
help you plan the best way to integrate digital retail into your in-store experiences.
About the Author
Tery Spataro is widely known for helping brands
understand the role technology plays in marketing,
innovation and retail environments. Wielding over
two decades of experiences in marketing as a digital
strategist, Tery takes a deep look into understanding
why, what and who.
She has created tech marketing strategies for
automotive, food and beverage, consumer packaged
goods, education, energy, entertainment, health care,
insurance, pharmaceuticals, non-profits and retail
brands.
Tery has brought digital to life in physical space, having worked with Bloomingdales,
Michael’s craft stores, Sally Hansen, Novartis, Whole Foods and Nine West. Tery founded
or co-founded, self-funded and operated seven start-ups, held executive roles with top
agencies, served as senior strategist for several consulting firms. Through the years she has
lectured at universities and international conferences, providing valuable industry thought
leadership, and has been quoted in books and articles about business and marketing. You
can connect with Tery on LinkedIn.
Special Heartfelt Thanks to Rick Colby for editing.
Setting the Stage
Retailers are faced with many challenges created by digital technologies. Some of the
difficulties facing retailers include getting the attention of the distracted customer, deep
discounting, decreased dwell time, showrooming, customer privacy concerns, and
complicated integration of the omni-channel. Capturing the awareness of distracted
customers before they make a decision to purchase, both during the decision making
process and after the purchase is completed, is complex. The friction of communicating with
the customer needs to be lowered. The customer doesn’t care where the message comes
from—television, email, banner, radio, or online from the brick and mortar—the customer
only cares if the brands they are purchasing are the best for their needs and the purchasing
process is stress-free.
Today we are living in an incredibly challenging and exciting time for retail. The changes
that digital technologies have created are providing retailers with opportunities to know their
customers, create deeper relationships, and lower the friction of the connection through a
seamless omni-channel.

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About our Re-imagining the in-store Digital Retail Experience guide
Smart Insights has prepared “Reimagining the Retail Experience” guide to help assess your
readiness and identify the digital experiences in-store to enhance your customer’s experience
with your brand.
This guide will help you to assess your retail business’ readiness and define a strategy to
seamlessly integrate omni-channel before going forward with any decisions to use digital and
technology to create in-store experiences.
By using the guide you will be able to:
þþ Assess the challenges your retail business and brand are facing
þþ Identify the opportunities for using digital technologies in-store
þþ Understand your customer’s digital behavior
þþ Design customer journeys that integrate channels to maximize sales
þþ Learn about digital experience best practices from examples
þþ Prepare for the future of retail
þþ Produce a digital experience plan
How will the guide help me?
This guide will help you assess and examine ways you can redesign the in-store experience,
deepen the customer relationship and reconsider the omni-channel/multichannel.
Reimagining the in-store digital retail experience guide will give you practical advice to
research and define the opportunities and solution in order to plan, design, implement,
deploy, measure and involve your team.
They will also help you make the decisions on whether or not to transform your retail store
into a marketplace, and provide you with access to templates and tools to help with the
planning process if you chose to incorporate digital technologies in your store.
Who is the guide written for?
Our e-book is designed to help you and your team identify problems you are facing
with your retail store, help you organize the steps to take to recreate the in store
customer experience, so that you can create inspiring retail experiences that will fulfil
your business and brand objectives and the needs of your customers. It’s aimed at
improving commercial returns for retailers and e-commerce merchants who have a
desire to develop deeper customer relationships. It’s aimed at Chief marketing officers
(CMOs), directors, managers who are in either customer or client services, creative
services, marketing, merchandising, e-commerce, web marketing, internet production,
omni-channel/multichannel producer, customer insights, market research, customer
loyalty and division managers.
What does this guide include?
The 7 steps covered in this e-book are:
Step 1: Analysis to uncover opportunities and challenges
First, we will review the top challenges facing retailers, overview the latest trends in in-store
digital technologies, and discuss assessment tools that will help you uncover your retail
situation analysis and identify the business problem and brand challenge you may be facing.

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We will examine how your competitors are using digital experiences in-store and identify the
behaviors your customers are using with digital.
Templates and tools will be provided to help you with your situation analysis.
þþ Taking stock of your retail store and competitors’ use of digital
þþ Cheat sheet for observing your customer’s in-store use of digital
þþ Pathway and obstacles through your store
þþ Assessing your omni-channel
þþ Stacking up against your competitors positioning map
þþ Defining business problems, brand challenges and solutions
After uncovering the challenges of your retail business and brand, we will identify
opportunities, and help envision a new vision for using digital in-store.
Templates and tools will be provided to help you align the business problem and brand
challenge.
þþ Examples to help alignment of your business and brand
þþ Envisioning the omni-channel as an ecosystem
Step 2: What do your customers need?
Now that you have assessed your business and brand, you will need to understand your
customer’s needs, identify top needs of customers before, during and after shopping; frame the
customer journey from home, life and in-store; identify the behavior of your customer and their
needs; your customer’s needs to your business and brand objectives. This alignment provides
you with a perspective so that you can examine your customer’s use of the digital technologies.
Templates and tools will be provided to you help you identify your customer’s behaviors and
needs and illustrate their use of digital in home, in life and in-store.
þþ Shopping personas
þþ Technograph template
þþ Digital and social media assessment
þþ Customer journey mapping
Step 3: Define the retail digital experience
Now it all leads up to this moment – your experience plan! The culmination of your findings
will point to the experiences your customers will appreciate in your retail store.
We will provide a template that will help you build your experience plan.
Step 4: Your customer’s multi-journey
The customer is focused on the journey to purchase; as a retailer we can help them get what
they need. One of the most important strategies for retail stores is the conversion strategy. In
this section we discuss the different strategies to put in place to lower omni-channel friction
and to make a connection with your customers to help them with their path to purchase.
Designing multichannel journeys – how does to design journeys integrating from:
þþ Offline advertising
þþ Desktop/tablet website integration

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þþ Mobile/smartphone integration
þþ In-store purchase
Step 5: Designing to retain
Retention is just as important as conversion. Here we will explore different relationship
development methods through content, apps, and devices to engage your customer and
bring them back in store. We will cover best practices and case studies.
Our assessment tool will help identify the components you will need to design and deploy the
digital experience for your store.
Step 6: Performance, tracking and evaluating
Tracking the performance of your in-store experience is extremely important. This section will
discuss the key performance indicators (KPIs) and alignment of the KPIs to your objectives.
Provided will be a framework to examine tracking and evaluation of the performance of your
digital experience. Also, included will be a discussion on dashboards that can be integrated
into your digital experience to help you track and evaluate.
þþ Chart illustrating top KPIs for in-store and level of complexity
þþ Evaluation template
Step 7: Refreshing
Maintenance is a big part of satisfying the customer’s need for newness. Managing and
updating content will help you meet the needs of your customer, brand and business. In this
final section we will discuss the upkeep of the in-store digital experiences.

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Step 1
Analysis to uncover opportunities and challenges
In this step we will review the top challenges retailers are facing; review the latest trends
using in-store digital technologies; discuss assessment tools needed to help you uncover
your retail situation analysis and identify business problems and brand challenges you may
be facing; examine how competitors are using digital experiences in-store; and help you
identify the behavior your customers are using with digital.
Templates and tools will be provided to help you with your situation analysis.
þþ Taking stock of your retail store and competitor’s use of digital
þþ Cheat sheet for observing your customer’s in-store use of digital
þþ Pathway and obstacle through your store
þþ Assessing your omni-channel
þþ Stacking up against your competitors positioning map
þþ Defining the business problem, brand challenge and solution
After uncovering the challenges of your retail business and brand, we will identify
opportunities and help you envision a new vision for using digital in-store.
Templates and tools will be provided to help you align the business problem and brand
challenge.
þþ Examples to help alignment of your business and brand
þþ Envisioning the omni-channel as an ecosystem
Over the past couple of decades the behavior and decision-making process of the buyer has
changed. Most of this change has to do with access to technologies that make their shopping
experience helpful and pleasurable. In most cases, they want to get what they want, when
they want it, how they want it and with whom they want it with.
Technology is making it easier for consumers to shop to, but customers still want to:
þþ Have an immediate need filled/get a product without having to wait for delivery
þþ Discover and try new products
þþ Shop together — the social aspect of shopping will not go out of style
Five key1
considerations for the retailer include:
þþ Discovery
þþ Fulfillment
þþ Transaction
þþ Social entertainment
þþ The core to loyalty is building the relationship with your customers and helping to bridge
the gap between brand, store and customer.
The future of retail is often presented as the science fiction classic, Minority Report, where
embedded sensors scan a person’s retinas as they walk past a store or display, personalizing
1
Brown, Mike. (2014). “Recasting the Retail Store in Today’s Omni-channel World”. ATKearney.

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the advertising to them. Is this the future we want for our customers, or that they want? What
is clear is that we now have the tools available to make a customer’s before, during and after
visit to the store pleasurable so that they can get what they, when they want it, and how they
want it.
FIGURE 1 FUTURE OF RETAIL OMNI-CHANNEL TO HYPER-CHANNEL CREATIVE
REALITIES ADAPTATION.
The way our future customers will shop will dictates the types of experiences they desire. It’s
up to us to create the future of shopping.
Today’s retail growth strategies must go beyond growing by real estate. Retailers must
consider if growing by real estate is a strategy that is going work in today’s economy,
or whether leveraging other strategies to acquire and retain a customer base should be
considered. The cost of real estate continues to climb, along with energy, distribution costs
and cost to serve. This means rethinking the customer’s needs in your stores, including
cross-referencing the geolocation of the store, assessing if the shopper’s behavior is
grab-and-go, drive through, or browse and dwell.2
In the Spotlight
To serve the changing needs of the grocery shopper, Tesco Homeplus launched its
first-ever virtual grocery store in 2011 in South Korea to address the changing needs of their
customers. Homeplus enabled the customer to access the grocery store within the subway
without having to go to a physical location.
Take a look at the video which describes the problem and solutions Tesco came up with to
grow and expand their market. The solution is simple and elegant and caters to the needs of
the customer through new technologies. This example is often quoted and no longer recent,
but we had to include it as an example of how innovation can drive awareness.
2
Author Unknown. (April 19, 2013). “The digital future of retail”. Merchandising Matters.

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COPYRIGHT TESCO-HOMEPLUS-SUBWAY-VIRTUAL-STORE-IN-SOUTH-KOREA
Customers select items to purchase by scanning a QR code [barcode], purchase and
then arrange for delivery. The interesting behavior that occurred with the Tesco in subway
solution was that people spent more time in the subway choosing items. For instance,
an order of five items took 5-10 minutes to complete3
. To make this idea really catch on,
pricing must be good to encourage usage. South Korea has 10 million mobile users in
a population of 50 million. Within three months of launch, Tesco Homeplus saw a 130
percent increase in sales. Note: the virtual store worked in South Korea but may not work
in other cultures.
Consequences & Considerations
3
Author Unknown. (March 31, 2012). “Tesco Homeplus Virtual Subway Store”. The Korea Guide.

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þþ Retailers will take a hit from impulse purchases
þþ Inventory management and at-home delivery could be difficult to scale
þþ Increase sales through availability and ease of purchase
þþ Increase in brand awareness due to virtual shelves4
This example is important because at the time it demonstrated an innovative, clever and
creative use of technology, while solving the problem of expansion and the real human
needs of the shopper. QR codes remain popular with advertisers, but Image Recognition5
is
gaining in usage. Macy’s tested a combined use of QR codes and Image Recognition to test
print to mobile behavior. Using image recognition technology, consumers could download
an app, wave a phone over the direct mail and access exclusive content.6
Using image
recognition technology, consumers could download an app, wave a phone over the direct
mail and access exclusive content. (Johnson. 2014)
What is it? QRCode
QRCode (Quick Response code) is like a barcode that can be scanned with a QR reader
from a smartphone. The QRCode led the user to the information.
Bringing it to life
The costs for Tesco Homeplus were based on the creation of Homeplus app, QR code
implementation, database and content, and the creation and installation of eye-catching
backlit panels for the subway. The panel creation and installation costs could increase due to
additional locations, but would be far less costly than taking on a lease for retail for ten years
or more.
QR codes are easy to implement. The content the QR code provides must address all the
needs of the customer, including product information, ingredients, uses and/or recipes,
price and buying location. The costs of creating the mobile app will vary from developer to
developer.
Tesco expanded the Homeplus virtual store to include bus stop shelters in South Korea. The
Google Playstore boasts between 1-5 million installs of the Homeplus app.
What is it? Image recognition technologies
Image recognition technologies strive to identify objects, people, buildings, places, logos,
and anything else that has value to consumers and enterprises. Smartphones and tablets
equipped with cameras have pushed this technology from mainly industrial applications (for
example, sorting fruit) to consumer applications. (Gartner. 2013).
What to think about
In this first step, we will take stock of your retail store’s use of digital and your competitors’
use of digital.
4
Deale, Sean. (September 30, 2011). “QR Codes Enable Virtual Shopping From Metro Stations in Chile and
South Korea”. RetailNet Group.
5
Carver, Ann, Puterbaugh, John. (2013). “Mobile Activiation Study January-December 2013”. Nellymoser.
6
Johnson, Lauren. (January 17, 2014). “Macy’s CMO: QR code revival driven by image recognition”. Mobile
Marketer.

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FIGURE 2 PERCEPTION MAP, NELSON FRETIAS,
TERY SPATARO FOR CREATIVE REALITIES
You will need to gather the data you need to make an informed decision on what to do to
create in-store digital experiences for your customers and what types of technologies will
work best for your retail store.
This exercise is important so that you have a good understanding of what tactics are working
to bring your customers to your store. If they are working, then the content utilized from these
tactics will be beneficial for the in-store experience.
What to gather for your marketing tactics:
1. Traditional advertising
2. Digital and social media
3. Mobile
4. E-Commerce
5. CRM and promotions
Awareness Acquisition Retention Conversion Loyalty Comments
Traditional
Digital/Social
Media
Mobile
E-Commerce
CRM
Coupons

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After gathering the tactics you are using, let’s assess the performance of these tactics. Here
is a framework to help you assess them:
Key Performance Indicators
Brand awareness
Acquisition
Retention
Conversion
Loyalty
Create a grid putting your tactics in the left column with the key performance indicators as top
headers. Rank the performance of each tactic’s ability to bring your customer in store from 1
performing the best to 5 not performing at all. In your assessment note in the comments why
it performed.
Rank: 1 Best performance 2 Good performance 3 Satisfies objectives 4 Fair 5 Fails
Now that you have taken a critical look at the performance of your tactics and determined
what is working to bring your customers in store, we are going to look at your competition.
In this exercise you will observe what your competition is using for digital in-store
experiences. Here you will set asset your judgment and are not going to get caught up in
what you should have done. You will critically assess and learn from what your competition is
doing right and what may not be working. You should visit three of your competitors’ stores.
You should also look at one outlier. Try to stay away from the Apple Store model: it’s the best
example but so overused, and there are others.
Use a framework that best describes the behavior your customer will take on a typical visit
to your store. Here’s an example of a framework. Vertical criteria addresses the customer’s
state of mind while the horizontal criteria addresses the customer’s activities. Determine
where is your brand positioned on the map?
Take note of the behavior customers are having with the digital technology of a competitor’s
or outlier’s retail store. Ask these questions:
rr Who are the customers?
rr What are they doing?
rr Why would they interact with this digital technology?
rr What benefits are customers getting from using this technology?

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FIGURE 3 SHOPPER’S BEHAVIOR AT HOME, IN-STORE AND IN LIFE. NELSON
FRETIAS, JEFF CLIFF FOR CREATIVE REALITIES
FIGURE 5 COMSCORE INSIGHTS MOBILE PATH TO PURCHASE
This helpful illustrated [Figure3] cheat sheet describes the behavior shoppers could take
in various stages during their shopping consideration and the environments they could be
in. While at home, a shopper could research and compare brands and products. Some
shoppers will seek advice, assistance and recommendations from family, friends or
influencers they trust. While in-store, they can sample and gather detailed information from
in-store communications and signage. They will reach out to sales associates for help. The
shopper’s companion is the smartphone. They will use their smartphones to comparison
shop across competitor’s stores and even Amazon for better prices, assortments, and deals
— this is known as “showrooming.” After the purchase is complete, the shopper-turned-
buyer may socially share what they purchased, and provide a recommendation of the brand,
product or experience they had.

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What is it? Showrooming
Showrooming is the behavior a shopper takes to first tryout a product in store then using
a smartphone or a computer searches for the same product for lesser price online for
purchase.
The fear of showrooming can be transformed into a customer behavior known as
“webrooming.”7
Typical behavior of customers in all age categories is to research the product
online, then go into a store to evaluate before purchasing. Retailers can take advantage of
customer’s webrooming behavior by having a clearly defined omni-channel.
What is it? Webrooming
Webrooming is the behavior a consumer takes by researching online, before going into
the store to elevate and examine the physical product before purchasing. [Donnelly,
Bertschinger, Haraguchi, Richards. 2014].
What did you learn from this exercise?
You gathered the information on your brand’s use of digital, competitor’s use of digital in-store
and have a better understanding of your customer’s shopping behavior.
Let’s take a good hard look at the information. The bullet points are guides.
What insights are bubbling up for your retail store’s situation?
rr Dwell time
rr Showrooming
rr Assortment
rr Assistance
What problems is your customer having with the current retail experience?
rr Not enough variety or assortment
rr Rushed and in a hurry
rr Not enough time to discover
rr Can’t find where the product is located or what product they are looking for
What challenges do you think you may face?
rr Adoption by customers
rr Expense
What solution can best help your brand connect your customers to your store?
rr It’s not just offers anymore! What experiences will keep your customers coming back?
Now that you have taken a deeper look at your digital state, your customers’ behavior and
the positioning of your competitors and your brand, you have formulated your thoughts on the
problems you would like to solve. In the next step, we will align your customer’s needs to your
retail objectives.
7
Donnelly,Chris, Bertschinger, Adrian, Haraguchi, Takaaki, Richards, Dave. (2014). “The Secrets of”. Accenture.

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In the Spotlight – CloudTags NFC integration in-store
CloudTags are working with a number of retailers to create with an innovative, omnichannel
experience using mobile devices and NFC technology. The retailers such as Harvey Nichols
and MADE (an online furniture retailer) have been putting tablets in stores for consumers to
pick up and use. The customer simply enters their email address, which creates a customer
profile and by interacting with physical products via tapping on NFC icons in store they get
rich, in depth product content such as images, videos, and recommendations. There is also a
separate tool that allows users to send details of the products to the inbox.
If assisted by staff, the store is able to track and attribute activity online (should the user go
home and purchase) so the original sales person is included in the credit for the sale.

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Results
Harvey Nichols found that 90% of shoppers engaged in-store were not previously known to
them. 16% of all shoppers engaged with the experience and 18% took further action after
receiving an email.
MADE, also used the technology at their Notting Hill Show room. 21 % of consumers opted to
have their in store collections sent to their inbox, 41% went on to browse products online, and
over the course of the trial the average order value went up 15%.
This example shows how today, consumers are happy to interact with a company using
technology. Ease of purchase, good customer experience and strong engagement are
moving beyond attractive extras and are becoming standard expectations.
1- Build your social media strategy.
Social proofing is a powerful way to aid customer purchasing decisions, if they are unsure
about you or your products; they can see what people online think about you. It would be
great to see this evolve to feed live reviews of products; I wonder how many would be brave
enough to do this.
Recommended Guide http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/social-media-marketing-7-steps-
to-success-ebook
2- Content
The Cloudtags examples show that for this to work you need to have more exclusive content,
so your content strategy is key here, the same can be said about the C&A examples. Brands
need to continue to focus on creating valuable, relevant content and distribute it where their
customers need it along the buyer journey, both on and offline.

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Recommended Guide http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/content-marketing-strategy-
guide/
3- Attribution
With technology bleeding into the on and offline world getting your attribution models in order
is critical. So get your house in order to make sure all your touch points are accounted for.
Recommended guide http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/media-attribution-analysis-model-
ling-guide/
*source: Google Consumer Barometer- Smart Shopper Insights-filter to UK, Clothing and
Footwear

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Step 2
What do your customers need?
Before we start the section on aligning customers’ needs to your objectives, let’s discuss
research. Research is an important part of retail marketing and should not be overlooked,
especially innovation research in which digital experiences in-store can be categorized.
What is it? Voice of the customer (VOC)
Voice of the customer (VOC) is a process for capturing customers’ requirements.
It produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs which are organized into a
hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction
with current alternatives. [Gaskin, Griffin, Hauser, et al. 2011.]
The voice of the customer (VOC) research methodologies help you uncover and identify
unmet needs of the customer. There are several different types of VOC that will be useful
in gathering insights from your customers, identification of problems, and the type of digital
technology that will be useful to your retail innovation.
rr Ethnography involves observing your customers for extended periods of time, watching
their use of product or journey in-store.
rr Customer visit teams visit the customer or users using a laddering methodology to
uncover user problems, needs or wants.
rr Focus groups involve customers or users in identifying needs, wants, problems, pain
points and suggestions for new products or services.
rr Lead user analysis identifies innovative customers or users to identify problems and
solutions.
rr Customer helps design: customers or users are asked to help to design the next brand or
product.
rr Customer brainstorming: customers or users are asked to partake in formal brainstorming
sessions to come up with new designs.
rr Customer advisory board: identifies customers or users who want to offer advice on
problems and what new products are needed.
rr Community of enthusiasts brings together users who are on an online forum and enjoy
discussing the brand and product category. This helps to uncover problems and solutions.
(Cooper, Dreher. 2010).

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Extensively
Used
Not
Widely
Used
Very
Effective
Not
That
Effective
Ethnography
Customer Helps
Design Product
Customer
Brainstorming
Customer
Advisory Board
Community Of
Enthusiasts
Lead User
Analysis
Focus
Groups
Customer
Visit Teams
Peripheral
Vision
Disruptive
Technologies
Patent
Mining
Internal Idea
Capture System
Partners &
Vendors
External Scientific
CommunityFrom
Start-ups
External
Submission Of Ideas
External
Idea Contest
External
Product Designs
Voice-of-Customer Open Innovation Other Methods
Methods Positioning Map
Cooper, R. Dr. & Edgett, S. Dr. (March 2008). “Ideation for Product Innovation: What are the best methods?” PDMA Visions Magazine.
Source:
BY: Kirsten Rutherford
FIGURE 6 INNOVATION RESEARCH METHODS
SOURCE COOPER, R. DR. & EDGETT, S. DR. (MARCH 2008). “IDEATION FOR
PRODUCT INNOVATION: WHAT ARE THE BEST METHODS?” PDMA VISIONS
MAGAZINE. DIAGRAM BY KIRSTEN RUTHERFORD, READAPTED FOR ATOMDESIGN.
I prefer a combination of Ethnography, Customer Helps Design, Customer Brainstorming,
Customer Advisory Board and Community of Enthusiasts. I use a tool called STREAM®,
founded by ATOMDesign. STREAM®
combines these voice-of-customer methodologies and
provides access to an online community panel that helps in defining innovation for brand,
product and service design.
The data from your customer relationship management efforts will be effective in learning
about your customers’ past interactions with your brand and retail store. Danyl Bosomworth
offers a terrific approach to zeroing in on the value of customer relationships in his piece, “7
Big Questions to Drive Customer Engagement.”
Now that you have assessed your business and brand and identified any retail problems,
we will take a deeper look at understanding your customer’s needs. The shopper’s behavior
includes some of the top actions of customers before, during and after shopping. Here we
will frame the customer’s journey from home, life and in-store. To start, we will identify the
behavior of your customer and their needs and align business and brand objectives to your
customer’s needs. This alignment will provide you with a perspective on your customer’s
behavior and digital usage so you can identify solutions and begin to examine digital
technologies that can create retail experiences your customers will appreciate.
Templates and tools will be provided to help you identify your customer’s behaviors and
needs and capture their use of digital in-home, in life and in-store.

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rr Shopping personas
rr Digital and social media assessment
rr Customer journey mapping
rr Technograph template
Applying models of shopper behaviour to redesign experiences
Shoppers are not predictable, but we can create profiles of our customers to better
understand what they want, desire and, more importantly, need to have a fulfilling retail
experience. The buying decisions of the shopper can be influenced by their choices in digital
technology.
There are five shopping archetypes:
1. Mission Shoppers: They have a
specific intention to buy a particular type
of item.
2. Discount Customers: They shop
the same stores frequently, but make
their decisions based on the size of
markdowns and coupons that are
offered.
3. Loyal Customers: They represent no
more than 20% of customer base, but
make up more than 50% of sales. Not
a true 20/80 rule, but important to pay
attention to these customers.
4. Impulse Customers: They do not have
the purchase of a particular item at the
top of their to-do list, but come into the
store on a whim and enjoy browsing.
They will purchase what they think they
desire at the time.
5. Experiential Customers: They have
no specific need or desire in mind when
they come into the store. Rather, they
want a sense of experience and/or
community.8
The buyer’s decision-making process is no
longer linear. They will incorporate their use of
digital in their decision-making process.
Deconstructing the seven phases of a buyer’s
decision-making process will help us understand
where we can be useful to the buyer. In this
scenario, we will explore the process of the
consumer going from shopper to buyer and types
of digital actions taken at each phase of the
8
Hunter, Mark. (2011). “The Five Types of Shoppers”. The Sales Hunter.
FIGURE 9 NEED RECOGNITION
FIGURE 9 SEARCH FOR
INFORMATION
FIGURE 9 PRE-PURCHASE
COMPARISON

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decision-making process. The consumer may start
by recognizing a need, e.g., “I need new shoes”.
[Figure 2].
She may take many different actions to meet
her need for new shoes like searching online or
searching with a smartphone, asking friends for
advice, or getting advice from the sales associate
while she’s in-store. In this phase, she’s gathering
information on new shoes. [Figure 3].
Types of digital tactics to keep in mind when
observing Phase 2 of the buyer’s decision-making
process:
þþ Keywords and terms will be useful if the buyer
is using search
þþ Relevant online ads
þþ Pinterest brand boards
þþ Social media such as Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram
þþ Branded mobile app
þþ Email and enewsletter will work with loyal
customers
In Phase 3, the buyer will compare different types
of brands, styles, designers, colors, materials,
and prices. When using online or mobile, the buyer may have trouble deciding if the product,
in this case shoes, will fit. Warby Parker uses
augmented reality to let the customer try on
different glasses and has an easy return policy.
Zappos uses customer feedback on size so
that the customer can judge the fit. Zappos also
provides an easy return policy. If in-store, the buyer
can try on shoes and get an opinion. But the buyer
may use showrooming if the fit, color, style, design
or price doesn’t meet their expectations.
Innovative purchasing methods gives buyers the
ability to click and buy with mobile. The cash
register is no longer needed. When a sales
associate helps the buyer with their purchase by
presenting a tablet, the buyer doesn’t have to wait
in long lines. Grocery stores are using self-check-
out, giving time-strapped customers the ability to
buy and go. In some cases, buyers can purchase
from the online brand and return it to the retail
store.
Digital has changed the way customers share their
purchases with family and friends. Social media
makes sharing their thoughts about their purchase
easy to share. Some customers that have a good
FIGURE 11 PURCHASE
FIGURE 10 CONSUMPTION
FIGURE 13 POST-CONSUMPTION
FIGURE 13 DIVESTMENT

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experience with a brand they purchased or the retailer they purchased from want to share
their experience. “‘Social sharing can influence consumers more than price and brand and
motivate people to spend 9.5% more’, according to the research.9
” (Colwyn. 2014).
In the buyer’s post-consumption mode, if the product meets the expectations of the buyer
weeks after the purchase, the buyer may share the experience by writing a review about
the product, continue to share their thoughts through social media, and/or take a survey if
presented with one. At this point, it is important to grab the customer’s attention and remind
and reward them for being a good customer.
In the last phase of the buyer’s decision-making, he or she will determine if the product is
difficult to dispose of. Online businesses like Craig’s List and eBay make it frictionless for the
buyer to get rid of the products they own and no longer want. For a retailer, this may be an
opportunity to offer a disposal method. The divestment method could be linked to corporate
social responsibility and good will.
FIGURE 14 BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP, AN EXAMPLE OF NONLINEAR
OMNICHANNEL PURCHASING JOURNEY
The omni-channel is the marketing term for the integration of all the tactical touch points for
the retail brand. This includes traditional, e-commerce, CRM, and all the digital assets. The
customers do not care which channel they access; they want the same brand experience and
frictionless technology so nothing stands in the way of what they want when they want it.
The customer’s journey to the retail store is not a linear path. The omni-channel must be able
to touch and influence a customer at each point in time during their decision-making process
9
Colwyn, Susanne. (May 19, 2014). “The impact of social proof on online retail purchase”. SmartInsights.

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to buy. In an example of selling a designer dress, Boston Consulting Group illustrates these
moments in time and where the customer is in the environment, whether at home, in life or
in-store. This illustration will help you map your customer’s journey and your omni-channel.
John Bishop, lead consultant at experience design firm Creative Realities, had this to say
on the complexity of the retail omni-channel: “Perhaps one of the most daunting hurdles for
retailers to overcome regarding the establishment of a seamless digital experience in-store is
consumers’ high level of expectation. Consumers have grown accustomed to the simplicity,
ease, convenience and breadth of options that online retailers like Amazon and Zappos
provide. This has driven traditional brick-and-mortar retailers to play catch-up.
Not only are they expected to provide the prices, variety and delivery options that online
retailers can, but also to fulfill the promises of an in-store shopping experience, including
the desire for visual and tactile engagement, genuine personal customer service, and the
availability of products when a consumer wants them.
Macy’s was perhaps the first significant retailer to make a serious commitment to establishing
a true omni-channel approach. As such, they have seen success and have proven to be well
ahead of other retailers who are facing challenges in this space.
Their M.A.G.I.C selling approach, implemented through sales associates, delivers a
personalized experience for consumers and allows them feel as if their own concierge is
helping fulfill their order, even when products are not readily available.
Managing their large number of stores as local fulfillment warehouses cuts down on overstocking
at each location and prevents long distance shipping. As a result, same-day pickup delivery is
often available. As consumers expect to be able to browse online and pick up in-store, this also
provides a seamless fulfillment experience, expanding consumer choices.
Consistency of the experience across stores has always been a challenge, but retailers
leverage data and local consumer patterns (time-of-day traffic and requests, etc.), to tailor
each store for regional needs, styles and sizes. Investments in website and mobile apps
deliver convenience and help provide the simplicity that consumers expect around retail
transactions. This behavior (and data) in turn informs retailers on how to improve, enhance
and grow their omni-channel ecosystems.”

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In the Spotlight:
Discovering how twenty-somethings shop online, case study about Free People by Think
Brownstone’s Phil Charron.10
Think Brownstone is a digital design firm located in Philadelphia, PA, with a focus on creating
digital products and business applications.
In this case study from Think Brownstone, you will learn about a methodology that led to the
creation of personas for Free People. The personas were used to understand the buyer’s
behavior with Free People in order to develop branded content. The personas also informed
the digital behavior of the customer which can then be leveraged for the in-store experience.
Free People is known for their laser focus on the clothing preferences of “twentysome-
thing women who appreciate a line of clothing that caters to their intelligence, creativity and
individuality, while providing great quality and affordability.” When it came to learning more
about the electronic shopping habits of these consumers, Free People reached out to Think
Brownstone to develop user personas and recommendations for online shopping experiences
across different devices.
“The first step of the journey was to gain a broad understanding of the preferences and
behaviors of these users that would provide reliable trend data and insights to inform the
next, more granular stages of research. To do this, we deployed a nationwide electronic
survey. Good surveys are never created in a vacuum, so we worked closely with our Free
People team to refine the language and choices to match the Free People demographic.
When it was ready, we sent it to existing customers as well as non-customers to see if there
were any major differences in how these two groups shop. The main categories we focused
on were:
þþ Shopping motivation
þþ Browsing & purchasing habits
þþ Device selection & preferences
þþ Online shopping preferences & frustrations
þþ Social shopping habits
Our survey findings gave us some great high-level information that helped us design 20 live
interviews in which we went deeper and explored the nuances and drivers behind the trends
in a relaxed, conversational environment. These interviews also included two interactive
10
Charron, Phil. (2014). “Discovering how twenty-somethings shop online”. Think Brownstone.

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activities: First, participants used a card-sorting game to design their own ideal Free People
website (showing us how they categorize their clothing choices and their mental models for
locating and purchasing). Second, they went on an electronic shopping spree focused on
building up their wardrobe for two different, prescribed events. As the women shopped for
clothes, we asked questions to help us learn:
þþ How they engage with the Free People brand
þþ How they categorize items they’re looking for
þþ The effectiveness of the site’s taxonomy and navigational structure on different devices
þþ How they approach account registration and checkout
The next step was to supplement Free People’s existing marketing and merchandising
personas (“Free People Girls”) with a series of digital customer personas focused on their
customers’ technology behaviors and preferences. These personas reflected the qualitative
and quantitative data from the research phase to build five archetypes that answer the
questions:
rr What motivates Free People customers to shop online?
rr What devices do they use and when?

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rr How do they shop online?
rr What social tools do they use and why?
A key breakthrough when developing user personas was the creation of a unique mother/
daughter persona, reflecting the shopping habits of young women who are frequent mobile
shoppers, but lack the financial resources to actually make purchases. The shopping baskets
of these women are frequently captured via screenshot and sent by SMS to their mothers,
who curate the list and make the final purchase.
Key Findings and Recommendations:
After all that, we took one last pass through the research results to produce a detailed report
of our findings. The report included:
þþ Recommended enhancements to the desktop and mobile interfaces
þþ Supporting data for all enhancements
þþ Five online shopper personas to guide future design decisions
þþ Guiding principles for moving into new markets
þþ Considerations for future research strategies
þþ Summaries and raw data reports of all research activities for future reference
What to think about:
Before you can start putting in place digital experiences in-store, you need to know whether
or not your consumer will appreciate these new experiences.
FIGURE 15 FASHION MAVEN / EXPERIENTIAL TECHNOGRAPH, JEFF CLIFF, TERY
SPATARO FOR CREATIVE REALITIES
Let’s assume you have a deep and rich customer relationship management (CRM) system
and throughout the years you have been keeping track of your customers. You already have
them segmented by demography, psychographic, geography, and purchasing habits. You

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know their email address. You may even know the number of their mobile phone. You also
know what messages and content they will respond to. Their reactions are recorded in your
CRM system.
You can use this data to start creating a technograph. A technograph provides information
about the segment’s digital and technology usage. Understanding the customer’s usage of
technology will help you decide what types of digital experiences your customer may use in a
retail experience. In figure 6, the persona is defined by the customer’s segment, demographic
data of the segment, and the percent of spending and habits with technology. This
technograph also provides a deeper look at the persona’s knowledge of the category. The
lower right of the technograph explains the segment’s technology usage. Defining the digital
philosophy, behaviors, gadgets, new technology, favorite apps, category sources and social
media habits. The data provided in this example was gathered from an extensive survey and
an audit of the CRM.
To create your technograph, first identify your audience segments. This includes your
most loyal customers from these segments. Choose 10 loyal customers from each of your
segments. Create a survey with 20-30 questions, mostly multiple choice and open-ended, to
draw out insights. The objective of the survey is to learn the following from your customers:
þþ What they like about the in-store experience
þþ What would they like to see differently
þþ Digital philosophy
þþ Behaviors with technology and devices
þþ New technologies they like and are using
þþ Favorite apps
þþ Digital category sources they admire and read
þþ Social media habits
Combine your findings with the existing CRM data you have on your customer segment and
develop your personas and technographs. Use this framework to help identify:
rr The segment
rr Their personality with your brand and category [information you should have in your
CRM]

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rr Their digital and technology philosophy
rr Their needs for in-store
rr The insights you learned
The final item for your technograph will be for you to identify insights and problems, and
determine if your customers’ insights and problems align with the insights and problems you
identified for your retail store.
If you need more help on developing personas, Smart Insights’ writer, Liz Smyth, provides an
in-depth refresher on persona creation. Now, we are ready to begin the process of creating
the experiences plan. In Step 3 we will define the in-store digital experiences.
For more understanding about the different types of omni-channels and how these
tactics can improve customer experience refer to Kate Traynier’s “5 omni-channel retail
experiences”11
.
11
Traynier, Kate. (2012). “5 omni-channel retail experiences”. Smart Insights.

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Step 3
Define the retail digital experience
Now it all leads up to this moment — your experience plan! The culmination of your findings will
provide you with the experiences your customers will appreciate and use in your retail store.
In the previous sections, you gathered information about the use of digital by your retail
brand, your competitor’s use of digital in-store and your customer’s use of digital. These
findings helped you learn about strengths and weakness, gaps, white space and similarities
in using digital and technology to create customer experiences.
The data you collected will help you plan for the uses of digital and technology in-store to
inspire your customers. The process helped you assess and consider your business and
brand objectives. As part of this phase, you should note any unintended consequences.
Like any planning process, the content for your plan will include the challenge or problem,
vision, goal, objectives and tactical applications.
þþ The challenge or problem defines opportunities you could be achieving in store sales,
brand awareness, driving traffic to the store, acquiring new customers, converting a
product consideration to purchase, and/or developing a relationship with your customer.
þþ The vision is the overarching statement that envisions the desire for your retail brand and
business and the relationship you want to achieve with your customers.
þþ The goal defines the direction of the experience plan and the platform.
þþ Objectives define the ideas and actions taken by your retail brand in response to the
behaviors of your customers.

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In addition, the needs of the customer and brand will be expressed and combined into one
statement, creating an alignment.
Aligning consumer behaviors with experience design
The behaviors of customers can take many forms. Here, we have identified some of the
behaviors to help you get started. The behaviors are defined by the customer’s action and
the tactical application. When you embark on observing the behavior of customers in your
stores, their activities may be different.
The customer’s behaviors could include:
1. Explore — the customer may visit more departments, connect products with each
other, and even linger in those areas of interest.
2. Simplify — make it easy and exciting for the customer to find, filter and purchase the
item once the customer has discovered what is desired.
3. Learn — the customer may need knowledge about products, services and events
in-store.
4. Personalize — the customer may need uniqueness to satisfy personal tastes, state
of mind, style and/or design.
5. Share — the customer may wish to spread the word about experiences with
like-minded friends and family or engage with other customers who are expressing
something similar.
6. Buy — the customer will look for the purchasing process to be efficient and
seamless.

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Bringing this all together in the final experience plan statement:
Needs + Behaviors + Idea + Context + Content, Features, Functionality
FIGURE 15 PERCH INTERACTIVE ATHLETIC DISPLAY, 2014 CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
CONFERENCE. EXPLORATORY TOOLS DURING SHOPPING.
PHOTO BY TERY SPATARO
That content could be translate into devices, displays and wayfinders, augmented reality or
digital mannequins. Types of content to think about:
rr Exploratory tools for hunting, gathering and investigating before, during and after shopping.
rr Seamless account creation and access to content needed for planning daily/weekly
shopping, purchase history, recommendations, and inspiration.
rr Preferences, recommendations, dietary/calorie/ healthy requirements, color, design,
brand, to plan for daily/weekly needs, leverage past history, loyalty and deals. [Ubiquitous
content and CRM].

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rr Social shopping reviews, recommendations and likes, recipes, products and experiences.
[Customer and your social sites].
rr Purchasing without cash/credit, enable use of loyalty cards and coupons –- without
waiting in lines.
rr Information and direction on which aisle or what self the product is located on.
rr Don’t forget! Your advertising, events and loyalty programs should be incorporated into
the content that is available in-store.
In the Spotlight:
‘We are living in the moment of great change…it’s important to create an experience that’s
magical and memorable.’ Rick Caruso, National Federation of Retailers Big Show.
As retailers figure out how to incorporate the ever-changing omni-channel and added extra
credit card processing security, they will also need to think about the Internet of Things [IOT]
and how it fits into the retail experience and marketing budget. Some retailers are using
digital in-store to enhance the shopping experience of their customers. But implementing
these devices could be costly and time-consuming, especially if they fail to produce results
for the retailer.
But we must recognize that customers have overwhelmingly connected lives. In their
daily journey, they are shuttling between their homes and work in a constant connected
state. This connected state has an effect on their shopping behavior. Customers
will search online, comparing prices, promotions, ratings and reviews. Internally, the
customer may debate things like the difference between shipping costs versus the cost
of gas and driving time, even trying to figure out how to economize their activities. At any
point in the customer’s journey this shopping behavior could occur, even when they are
in-store.

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As a retailer, you probably are aware of this behavior known as ‘showrooming.’ Showrooming
is one of the most consequential consumer behaviors a retailer can observe.
Showrooming gives shoppers a variety of purchase options. While in the store, the customer
will search on their smartphones for better deals and may even leave the store if they find
a better product, price, discount and/or purchase for that product on their smartphone. This
could include having it delivered to their home or wherever–even gift wrapped.
It’s not just showrooming that may prevent a purchase in-store. There are other
circumstances that may prevent sales. In their busy and connected lives, time-strapped
customers’ dwell time may decrease when other distractions or dissatisfaction occurs.
With children in tow, having to divide attention between a child’s needs and the shopping
chore could result in forfeiture of a sale. All this restlessness could leave the connected
customer feeling as if the pleasure of shopping in-store is waning. Capturing the attention of
the time-strapped, bargain-hunting, child-toting and, in some cases, man-toting, connected
customers will be a challenge for retailers who don’t provide ways to improve these shopping
conditions for their customers.
What to think about – applying the Experience path template
This template will help you build your experience plan and allow you see the categories come
together and align.
EXPERIENCE
PATH
Header row
Needs
Objectives
Behaviors
Customer's
Behavior
Sales Associate's
Behavior
Responsibility
Assigned
1. The needs you identified for your customers come first. Customer needs are
important to build into the design process and enable a human design approach and
lend usability. The columns can increase or decrease depending upon the number
of needs you identified. You may the experience path based on each customer
segment, by doing so you will know what types of features each customer will use in
the experience.
2. The objectives represent the actions the brand must take to satisfy the needs of the
customer. For each customer need there will be an objective.
3. Behaviors is divided into key stakeholder segments: customer and sales associate.
The sales associate’s behavior is a response to the customer’s behaviors; i.e. the
customer seeks information on product; the sales associate will initiate help and
support then guide the customer to the desired department or product.

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4. Involvement by omni-channel leaders within your retail organization is important
to the success of your experience plan. Solicit their involvement by assigning an
experience path to champion and oversee. At this point, discussion on the integration
of the omni-channel need to take place.
At this point you need to involve the following people to brainstorm ideas: chief marketing
officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer, merchandising leadership,
ecommerce channel leadership, advertising leadership and CRM leadership.
After the experience path is completed, take a step back to examine the experience path
from the customer’s perspective. Questions you need to ask:
þþ What can you provide to help their experience in-store and help them purchase?
þþ Are your customers ready for a new technology experience?
þþ Are you ready to innovate the in-store experience?
þþ What are you willing to start off with?
Take small steps when transforming your store. The most important investment you can make
will be in the integration of your omni-channel. Retailers can no longer afford to allow one
type of revenue stream to destroy another. Think of the omni-channel as a self-generating,
self-sustaining ecosystem.
Consider this graphic, mobile is used to send the customer offers to drive her into store.
Ideally the objectives of your channels will be integrated and move the customer along
to eventually becoming loyal. Customers want a seamless low friction experience when
technology is involved, making it easier for customer to adopt.
There are mobile loyalty platforms available that are easy to install. Platforms like BellyCard,
FrontFlip or Veebo, which give control to small and medium-sized merchants who want to test
customer loyalty and mobile to help drive awareness of promotion to get customers to come
in-store.
Step 4 will discuss conversion strategy and the in-store digital experience.

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Step 4
Reaching across the aisle
FIGURE 16 BLOOMINGDALES AUGMENTED REALITY WINDOW DISPLAY
One of the most important strategies for a retail store to put into place is the conversion
strategy. In this section we discuss the different strategies to use so that your omni-channel
is connected to your in-store digital experience for your customers.
Best practices for conversion strategies in-store involve the store greeters also known as
store ambassadors, sales associates and cashiers. Each human touch point can help move
the customer who may be browsing or showrooming along the path to purchase from your
store. Understanding why a customer does not buy when in your store is key.
To note, there are different times of day, month, or season when conversion is high and times
when conversion starts to drop. The best way to gauge this is to observe the behavior of your
customers at various times of the day in your store. Take note of when transactions happen
and when customers leave your store without making a purchase. You will probably realize
that when your store is very busy the conversion rate drops, customers become impatient,
and the customer may prefer not waiting in line to check out, use a dressing room, or ask for
help from a sales associate.
Let’s cover the basics on conversion. Mark Ryski, writer for FSR, provides a great
explanation of how to calculate conversion: “Conversion rate is simply calculated by dividing
sales transactions by gross traffic counts. For example, if you logged 500 traffic counts in
your store and there were 200 sales transactions for the day, your conversion rate would be
40% (i.e. 200/500).”12
12
Ryski, Mark. (July, 2012). “5 Ways to Drive Customer Conversion Rates in Your Stores”. FSR Journalistic Inc.

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FIGURE 17 BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP, AN EXAMPLE OF NONLINEAR
OMNICHANNEL PURCHASING JOURNEY
Digital experiences needs to remove purchasing roadblocks for your customer. To strengthen
the success of conversion strategy, the experience needs to be integrated into your
omni-channel.
This Boston Consulting Group illustration (Figure 12) discusses the behaviors a customer
takes and determines the conversion strategy.
Boston Consulting Group highlights three scenarios, which take shoppers’ needs into
consideration.
Impulse: Customer sees a new dress in a magazine advertisement. Using image
recognition or QRCode will provide the customer with information on different sizes, colors,
prices and where to buy the dress. Giving the customer options to buy online or providing
the store’s location and store hours is a step toward helping the customer try on and
purchase the dress.
Mission: In a similar scenario, the customer is looking for suggestions in a magazine,
then uses her smartphone to scan for more information. While taking in the information,
the customer is given the option to notify the store that she would like to try on the dress in
different colors and sizes. The customer can then schedule a convenient time to go to the
store to try on the dress. The sales associate follows up to verify the customer’s appointment.
This is a great opportunity to help time-strapped customers get what they want when they
want it. When the customer arrives to try on the dress, her place in the dressing room is set
up. Getting the customer to try on clothing will more likely lead to a sale. This conversion
strategy elevates the retailer to concierge service.

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Experiential: The customer who is on a browsing journey may need more time to help
discover what he or she may need. These customers view shopping as an extension of
entertainment. A stimulating environment will keep them coming in. Using experiences
designed for trial will help convert the browsing customer. Augmented reality placed on the
outside of the store can capture the interest of the window-shopping customer, helping them
sample merchandise, select desired products and then go in-store.
Conversion should not be a chore for the customer, it should be seamlessly incorporated into
the experience to give the customer pleasure during their many shopping moods. Always
make it easy for the shopper to buy.
In the Spotlight
The store’s environment helps with creating conversion and increases dwell time. Relaxing
environments and immersive experiences help customers feel engaged and even cared
for. Affordable changes that a retailer could make in-store help make these environments
become real and more appealing.
To create a hospitable atmosphere, give customers a comfortable sitting area, wi-fi
access, digital theater, and/or provide them with warm and friendly assistance. Consider
giving those customers with children an opportunity to shop freely by providing an
in-store play area and babysitting services for their children. Reimagining the in-store
retail experience and catering to the needs of the customer can transform the retailer into
a merchant. Providing digital experiences that create an atmosphere and entertainment
in-store can help to add value by:
þþ Increasing the average purchase amount by 29.5%
þþ Adding an upswing in overall sales volume of 31.8%
þþ Growing repeat buyers by 32.8%
þþ Raising in-store traffic by 32.8%
þþ Seeing an improvement in brand awareness by 47.7%
Customer retention is the key, and now more than ever it is important to develop a
longer-term relationship with customers to bring them back into the store. Source: InfoTrends.
Gucci Milan creating runway excitement

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The digital theater Gucci Milan provides all the excitement of the runway while giving Gucci
customers an immersive brand experience. Customers swipe through life-size video look
books with an infinite assortment of Gucci styles. Gucci also didn’t forget its up-and-coming
customer: they also highlight Gucci children’s collections.
Gucci created a video wall for kids. Children are entertained by Gucci Teddy Bear, who
dances to beats and sounds created by children who interact with the wall.
MCDONALD’S INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
In the UK, McDonald’s created interactive “Happy Meal Play Zones”, associating their food
with fun and playtime. The results? 92% of five to nine-year-olds who tried the zone said
they enjoyed playing on the interactive floor media, 78% of parents liked the digital play
area, and 87% of five to nine-year-olds said they want to visit that McDonald’s more often.
(Brandchannel, 2012).13
What to think about:
Customers don’t care if they are disruptive! Creating a seamless conversion strategy will help
you develop a relationship with your customers. When shoppers are coming to your store,
browsing and leaving without buying, what can you do to turn the browser into a buyer?
Consumers now more than ever are shopping in-store using their mobile devices. A report
from Deliotte Digital cites, “84 percent of store visitors use their devices before or during
a shopping trip and 22 percent of consumers spend more as a result of using digital, with
just over half of these shoppers reporting spending at least 25 percent more than they had
intended”.14
13
Spataro, Tery. (April 2, 2014). “Creating effective in-store digital retail experiences”. Smart Insights.
14
Tode, Chantal. (April 29, 2014). “Mobile in-store shoppers bring higher traffic, conversion and spending:
Deloitte”. Mobile Commerce Daily.

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FIGURE 18 NINE WEST FLAGSHIP STORE MANHATTAN, JOSIAH HOBSON FOR
CREATIVE REALITIES
Taking stock to drive conversion.
1. Spend time learning about the behavior of your customers in-store
2. Note the highs and lows of your stores traffic and sales
3. Observer the usage of mobile in your store

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Putting mobile to use in all the right places.
FIGURE 19 AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS TIMES SQUARE,
SHANNON COGHIL, R/GA
1. Align your ecommerce site to the store so that you can give your customers the best
opportunities on mobile –- do not segment channels.
2. Turn your store into more than just a place to shop! Engage your customers and
involve with events that will have them using their mobile devices and sharing their
experiences on social media. The Nine West flagship store in Manhattan turned
their retail store into a showroom. Shoe-loving customers can try-on shoes using a
Nine West digital photo-booth, take a photo and show off their new look on the Nine
West digital column. American Eagle provided similar strategy by giving customers
their 15 minutes of fame on Times Square. After they purchased an item, they could
have their photo taken which appeared on their gigantic digital screen in the center of
Times Square.
3. Give them a reason to try products in-store! Use mobile to your advantage by
creating an extension to your customer’s need to learn more about product, pairing
and sales. Image recognition or QRcodes can provide education information on
using the product, pairing the product with other products, and create incentives for
purchasing.

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Step 5
Reinvigorating Retention
Figure 20 Vogue. 2012. Burberry Opens Regent Street Flagship store.
In Step 5, we will explore retention and designing experiences that will provide your
consumers with the relationship they want with your retail brand. Content, apps, and devices
are tactics that encourage digital retention. This section will help you decide what types
of digital experiences to design and deploy, creating a relationship with your most valued
customers.
You will find helpful ways of identifying the components you will need to design and deploy
the digital experience for your store.
Retention is the backbone to the continued existence of any business. This is very true for
retail! There is excitement about closing the gap within the omni-channel. The first hole to
plug is in retention.
Retention, when integrated into an infinite ecosystem, incorporates CRM but goes beyond
just the usual types of CRM. In order for this ecosystem to work in developing the relationship
you would like with your customer (and vice versa), the customer needs to participate. To get
your customers to participate, you need to engage them. This means a radical change in the
way retention is thought about and what retention means for your brand.
Current retention tools are a means of getting reoccurring business from your customers, but
they are impersonal. These tools can be warmed up to become more personal to reinvigorate
retention.

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“Therefore, multichannel retailers should think about the consumer in a holistic sense
and curate an experience—including post-purchase—that ties together and even
transcends all of the channels.”
- Shawn DuBravac. CES.
Every time a consumer goes to a department store, they get offered a store credit card. They
take it only because the offer to get a discount off the current purchase is desirable. Many
have no affinity to the store brand. This conveyor belt pinging of customers lets them know
there is a sale and accomplishes the objective of retention but does not always convert them
to loyal customers. Let’s figure out how to help the customer desire an ongoing relationship
with your retail brand.
Let’s turn this impersonal interaction into digital experiences that will thrill your customers and
keep them coming to your marketplace.
Your sales staff, CRM system and the tactics you are using for your omni-channel need to be
flexible to deliver on the digital experiences. To be effective, you must assess your relation-
ship-making strategies.
The greatest barrier to ensuring retention and loyalty with your customer is your sales staff.
Empowering sales staff should go beyond sales training meetings. The “black book of
customers” (also known as CRM) needs to be updated to include mobile interactions. You
observed customers using mobile in your store, why not empower your sales associates by
giving them a phone or tablet to use in-store, too? Many retailers are now using phones and
tablets to help sales associates develop a relationship with customers.
The tablet could be transformed into an extension of the showroom, providing an infinite
assortment of brands, and the tablet can be used to complete the transaction with the
customer. Like the black-book of customers, the customer’s desires such as designers or
brands, styles, colors, and sizes and purchase history can be tracked and added into to the
system. The sales associates can design personalized specials and loyalty rewards, and let
customers know when new merchandise is available, creating a relationship that is satisfying
to both sales associates and customers.15
The CRM system will be able to identify the types of communication a customer will opt into.
A personalized branded email from the sales associate increases the open rate of the email
as well as return visits to your store. The content of these types of communication must
be personalized so that the customer knows the interaction is genuine and the message
satisfies their unique needs. Empower sales associates to curate for the customer. The
customer’s past purchase history will be helpful to the sales associate when curating brands
that will bring the customer back to the store. The sales associate who takes the time to
curate an experience for their customer will make the customer’s buying journey special and
inspiring.
Many retailers hesitate to give a sales associate power over a customer relationship for
fear of what happens when a sales associates resigns. The best thing to do is reassure the
customer that the brand has their interests at heart and reassign a sales associate. Make
a formal introduction and invite the customer back into the store to meet their new sales
associate. (Pedraza. 2012)
Borrowing from US health care, where doctors make a patient’s medical data available
to them, make it a two-way street. Give your customer access to their purchasing history.
Giving them access to their purchase history may seem counterintuitive, but transparency is
important in building trust.
15
Pedraza, Milton. (October 17, 2012). “10 Retail Strategies for Luxury Brands to Improve CRM”. Luxury Society.

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Now that the customer is deeply involved in with your retail brand, create a referral program
for top customers to tell their friends and reward them for doing so. Incorporate the referral
program into every part of your omni-channel.
Bringing your customers back into your store becomes easier. To get the most out of
your omni-channel and have it work smoothly, let’s not stop at enhancing the digital
communications for retention, but work to include these digitally enhanced communications in
creating inspiring experiences in-store.
Your customer research provides you with a good idea of who your customer is and gives
insights into what types of shopping experiences your customers may desire. Combining
research and your retention strategy will enable you to provide customers with the inspiring
new experiences they deserve when they return to your store.
Your customers shop at your store for a variety of reasons, from physical convenience
and brand loyalty, to a desire to be entertained. Treat your store like the most important
destination your customers will ever encounter, and make it a place your customers will love
to visit, regardless of their shopping mode. Despite changes in the market, including store
closures, the physical store remains the cornerstone of a customer’s journey.16
(Brown, et al.
2014).
Retention inspired digital experiences include turning the store into a captivating
entertainment experience. Burberry Regent Street London created tasteful retail theater. The
use of digital screens do not detract from the overall brand experience.
16
Brown, Michael, Mendoza-Pena, Andreas, Moriarty, Mike. (2014). “On Solid Ground, Brick-and-Mortar Is the
Foundation of Omni-channel Retailing”. A.T. Kearney.

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FIGURE 21 MYLOWE’S IN STORE DISPLAY. TERY SPATARO PHOTO.
Burberry beautifully combines the classic elements of the brand with technology. It’s hardly
disrupting the atmosphere that is truly Burberry, as the interactive take-overs emerge. For
window shoppers, some maybe too timid to venture in, the window offers a touchscreen
experience provide information on the styles featured in the window.
Burberry recognizes that some customers enjoy being entertained, so they televise live
entertainment events on a big screen in the store.
RFID is incorporated into selected apparel and accessories to present multimedia for
relevant content. Sales associates use iPads that provide a customer’s purchase history and
preferences while they curate Burberry suggestions for the customer. Customers going to
Burberry feel welcomed and as if they are entering a magnificent home that surprises them
with new possibilities.

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In the Spotlight
MyLowe’s: Empowering Relationship-building by Sales Associates
The ingredients for the future of retail combine forward-thinking technology while
maintaining deeper relationships and providing a human touch. The best example of
this type of forward thinking is created and executed by Lowe’s, a U.S.-based home
improvement retailer. Lowe’s reinvented the hardware store into a home improvement
store when it realized its most loyal customers were female17
. Lowes took a giant step
forward by empowering sales associates to help customers with their home improvement
needs. Lowe’s first introduced customer purchase history in 2011 for desktop and now is
available on mobile.
Lowe’s provided 42,000 iPhones to sales associates, about 25 per store, and sales
associates can access a specialized version of the consumer home improvement company’s
app, MyLowe’s. The app gives the sales associate access to a customer’s purchase history
and provides product specifications. The sales associate can scan the customer’s key fob or
enter his or her information to get purchase history. The app is flexible. If a customer needs
to see a rating or review of a product, the sales associate can simply hand the iPhone to the
customer.18
“It’s really powerful for the overall relationship to tie-in the customer and sales
associate.”- Sean Barlett, Director of Mobile Strategy and Platforms at Lowe’s. Customers
no longer need to save their receipts to remember past purchases. Replacement
products like types of salt for the water softener can be stored in purchase history so a
customer does not have to struggle to remember the brand of salt last purchased. Think
about how much frustration can be eliminated from the customer’s daily life when the
types of paint, color and numbers of cans of paint are recalled easily. Now the customer
can accomplish the shopping task without guessing the type of colors or how much paint
is needed.
Lowe’s sales associates use the iPhone for:
þþ Creating a helpful customer experience
þþ Product discovery
þþ Providing purchase history
þþ Giving the customers the ability to see ratings and reviews
þþ Limiting time waiting in line for checkout –- the sales associate can assist the cashier by
using the iPhone to scan the customer’s items in a basket
The sales associate, by way of the iPhone app, helps the customer feel good about the home
improvement products they purchase through Lowe’s.
Real-time inventory management and information is provided to the sales associate and
customer about product details, how many items are in stock, and the fulfillment methods
available. The product is identified as available and tells where it is located in the aisle.
MyLowe’s app lessens the friction and frustration for the customer.
Prequel: Lowe’s has taken a gigantic leap forward and is experimenting with robot assistants.
These robots known as OSHbot, greet customers at the entrance of the store and help guide
17
Goodfellow, Pam. (April 15, 2013). “If Lowe’s Wants To Get Serious About Home Depot, It’ll Have To Man Up”. Forbes.
18
Bittar, Christine. (October 11, 2013). “Lowe’s Lets Customers Look Up Purchase History via Mobile”.
eMarketer.

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the customer through the store to products they need19
.
Annmarie Hanlon discusses the importance of customer reviews and the impact negative
reviews can have on your brand. Do read “The latest academic research on Digital
Marketing.20
”
What to think about – redefining the relationship during retention
Redefining the relationship through retention combines new technologies to help stimulate
the connection between the customer and retailer. The app, tablets, mobile phones, digital
displays, augmented reality, and other technology helpers should never replace what
your sales staff can provide the customer! The human touch needs to define the use of
technology, not the other way around.
Customers give loyalty when they feel they can trust a brand that has taken care of their
needs, whether they shop in-store or online. “Retailers’ understanding of assortment,
pricing and promotions across channels—areas where at least half of all shoppers expect
consistency—is equally important.” (Donnelly, Bertschinger, Haraguchi, Richards. 2014).
Some things to try:
1. If a CRM system is not implemented for your retail store, you will need to install one.
Smaller MaPa retailers could look at SalesForce as an option for CRM. The most
important reason is to help you in sustaining your relationship with your customer.
Knowing what your customers ordered and when they last ordered is helpful. This
information about your customers is useful in identifying how you can best help them,
learning what types of communications they prefer, and recognizing who your best
customers are by how often they purchase from you. All of this information helps
you identify your best customers, build a relationship with them and enables your to
provide a truly customized and special experience for your most loyal customers.
2. Your store is no longer about shelf space, your store is about a transformative
brand experience and an experience that differentiates you from your competitors.
Incorporating technology enables experiences that create loyalty and arms your
sales associates with apps that help customers find the products they need.
Combine these apps with CRM and your sales associates will be empowered to help
customers get what they want.
3. The sales associate is intuitive and will have a human understanding of the needs of
the customer and categorize based on purchase for self or someone else. Surprise
the customer with something new and exciting –- have the sales associates curate
items for customers and send personalized notes with these items. The human
touch is really warming and recommendations help support return visits to the
store. The data on the customer will note whether the customer prefers an email
correspondence, social media or traditional mail.
4. Platforms like BellyCard, FrontFlip or Veebo give control to small and medium-size
merchants, who want to test the loyalty and mobile to help drive awareness of
promotion to get customers come in store. These applications can be customized
to identify best customers and provide them with something special. Try not to
over-saturate offerings —it’s a turn-off. Instead, think of ways of being helpful.
19
King, Rachel. (October 28, 2014). “The Newest Workers for Lowe’s: Robots”. Wall Street Journal.
20
Hanlon, Annmarie. (July 15, 2014). “The latest academic research on Digital Marketing?” Smart Insights.

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