How To Prevent Offline Retail From Becoming A Window Display During Short Holidays, Golden Week, 618 And Double 11? Footwear Retail Industry First Tries VOLUMENTAL Black Technology

The retail industry has to admit that a trend is rising: more and more people use offline stores as showrooms and fitting rooms. Recent research shows that nearly 70% of consumers admit that they will make the final purchase online. In the face of the upcoming sales peak season, such as short and long holidays, Golden Week, 618 and Double 11, how to avoid making offline retail stores a showcase? The footwear retail industry took the lead in making changes: they are trying to use AI and 3D scanning black technology to break through the difficulties of the retail industry and inject new vitality into offline retail stores.

Shoes The dilemma faced by the retail industry

This picture is constantly being staged in shoe retail stores: a customer enters the store and tries on several pairs of shoes of different sizes, colors and models. The clerk ran back and forth to the storage room and made suggestions based on customer feedback and functional problems. After a while, the customer seemed very satisfied with the shoes, but then they turned on their mobile phones and left without buying them.

This is an increasingly common consumer behavior, which we call "showroom effect". Shoppers go to physical stores to see, explore and test products, and then finally buy them online, because they think online prices are usually low. From the perspective of consumers, this is reasonable - but for retailers and store employees, it is a costly and frustrating phenomenon.

This phenomenon was once limited to large commodities such as automobiles, electrical appliances and electronic products, but now it has expanded to retail categories such as clothing and shoes. A study by PushOn, an e-commerce organization headquartered in the UK, found that 70% of consumers had seen the products in the store before the final online purchase. Although this phenomenon may continue, shoe retailers have started to change the status quo by using innovative technology to turn showroom shoppers into loyal customers.

Build trust and take steps Breaking the showroom effect Step 1

Compared with e-commerce, one of the biggest advantages of offline retail is to build trust with customers, especially personalized and diversified products like shoes. We need to realize that not every shopper wants to buy when they first go to the store, but every interaction can build trust, so as to bring greater sales in the future.

A powerful way is to obtain the customer's contact information and embed it into the physical retail experience. For example, Volumetal, a retail technology innovation company, provides a 3D foot scanner for shoe retailers, which can obtain the detailed information of customers' feet in less than 5 seconds. This scan is based on Volumtal's more than 40 million foot scan databases, matching shoppers with recommended shoe types and sizes. After experiencing the Volumetric scanner in the store, more than 70% of customers left their contact information because they could get free foot information.

Therefore, even if consumers do not have purchase behavior, their contact information is successfully saved in the retailer's marketing database, which greatly increases their chances of buying from stores (in person or online) in the future. According to the data of Volumetal, users view their scans 4.6 times a year on average, which further increases the frequency of consumers' repeated contact with the retailer's products and activities. Volumetal helps retailers turn digital technology into their advantage.

reduce Return rate ， increase Sustainability

Compared with offline retail, the showroom effect has an inevitable disadvantage: it turns sales online, and online shopping is a disaster area for free returns. In the United States, the return rate of online shopping is 2-3 times that of offline shopping. It is estimated that $5 trillion of goods purchased online are returned every year. Although some returned products can be repackaged and transferred, most of them will eventually be buried. Nearly a quarter of returns can only be disposed of by retailers as garbage. According to the estimation of Optoro, the technology platform, 9.5 billion pounds of returned goods were finally buried last year.

In this case, the environmental impact of returns has also become a concern for consumers, and the sustainability effect will have a significant impact on consumers' purchase choices. This also brings opportunities for shoe retail: when shoe retailers have solved the main problem of shoe return - fitting, they can provide more sustainable solutions. The average return rate of retailers using foot scanners dropped by 18%. With more detailed scanning reports, retailers can turn the reduction in return rate brought by technology into a competitive advantage. Reducing returns not only contributes to sustainable development, but also these ideas and measures will become the key to attract and retain customers.

satisfy Shoppers Independence, provide more Self service selection

Another key point about the showroom effect is that it is not entirely driven by consumers seeking lower prices. Many consumers just prefer to control the purchase process by themselves and become more and more accustomed to self-service shopping. Whether it means buying online or using self-help technology in stores, more and more people prefer to be "alone" when buying.

For this reason, Volumetal provides two foot scanning solutions: clerk guidance and consumer self-service. In this way, retailers can choose to implement different service schemes offline: focusing on boutiques, personalized services or a more fluid, customer driven approach - or both.

For example, if the staff in the store is limited or busy with other emergencies, customers can go to the Volumetric scanner by themselves. The five second scan will retrieve and analyze the customer's foot contour, and record the difference between length, width and other features, such as instep height, heel width, etc. The user interface on the iPad will recommend specific styles and sizes to customers based on inventory, and provide useful and easy to understand suggestions and analysis for their feet. Customers choose suitable shoes from the shelves, so the shop staff can complete the transaction without spending too much time.

In the final analysis, this self-service method can enable retailers to replicate the seamless shopping mode of e-commerce in your physical store environment, which is also a breakthrough for offline retail. The showroom effect is a logical and inevitable result in the Internet era. But with the right technology, strategy and mentality, it can change from a challenge to an opportunity - and for shoes and all retailers, there is no time to waste.