Did you know that across our region, 84% of omnichannel retailers let store assistants access stock data from other stores and online.
That’s just one insight from our recent study: The Omnichannel Index 2024. Conducted in collaboration with Impact Commerce, the report sheds light on how well retailers and brands provide a great customer experience across channels.
The study benchmarks 368 retailers across six markets — the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark — by evaluating 70 touch points of the consumer journey. This is the biggest and most comprehensive omnichannel study in Europe to date, resulting in more than 25,000 data points.
Here’s what we learned:
1. Connect online to offline: Unleash the power of your full inventory
The frustration of finding the perfect item, just to learn it’s unavailable, is a common pain point for many shoppers. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Omnichannel retailers can unlock their full inventory potential by displaying store inventory on product pages while also expanding their offering in physical stores by offering features, such as ship-from-store. This ensures maximum product availability for customers, while also having the potential to boost sales by providing the same-day delivery option that many consumers crave.
Yet, despite this being a good solution to a common pain point, the research reveals a surprising fact: only 20% of retailers currently offer to ship-from-store.
One retailer that has understood how to leverage holistic fulfilment methods is Gigantti. The Finnish retailer came out in the top spot in our study, partly due to its focus on stock availability to ensure a seamless omnichannel experience, regardless of the purchase channel.
Kasper Holst, co-founder of Impact Commerce, Scandinavia's biggest Commerce Consultancy, explains why all retailers should prioritise unlocking their full inventory: “It’s about giving the customer what they want. We know that 20% of all retail is ‘I want it now’, so being able to show your stock — in real time — across all your platforms is essential.”
2. Clienteling: Building relationships that drive results
The modern shopper also craves a personalised touch: 71% of consumers expect companies to understand their preferences. Whilst clienteling has traditionally been associated with the high-end and luxury markets, the mechanisms involved revolve around advising and inspiring your customers across channels.
One way brick-and-mortar stores can build personalised customer journeys is through the use of mobile POS systems (mPOS) to, with consent, follow up on potential sales. Allowing retailers to take sales at any place in the store, they also provide store assistants with access to consented customer data, allowing them to provide a personalised service based on prior purchases and the like.
Ganni, a Danish clothing retailer, exemplifies the power of clienteling. It developed a unique "abandoned fitting room" initiative that utilises mPOS to follow up with customers who leave fitting rooms without buying anything. Whilst only 4% of retailers in the study used mPOS, Ganni used it to empower store assistants to find out if the issue was fit, colour, or something else. This personalised approach fosters stronger customer relationships and ultimately boosted their conversion rates.
In fact, the retailer saw 9% of total store revenue coming from clienteling, in the six months following the launch of the service.
“What retailers like Ganni are doing with clienteling is a natural extension of engaging with customers in the world,” continues Holst.
“It’s like having a really good sales associate in your pocket who can advise you on the right skincare, or jeans size for you. Other brands use WhatsApp for similar purposes, and both the brand and consumers adopt it in a similar way to how they’d actually communicate with their friends.”
3. Embrace sustainability: A win for the planet and your bottom line
Sustainability is a core value for today's eco-conscious consumers. As a result, the retail industry, with its significant environmental footprint, has a responsibility to adapt. Yet research shows that only 11% of retailers offer online second-hand shopping. Given the projected boom in the global resale market, this is a missed opportunity.
That’s why retailer Elgiganten offers a repair scheme, where over 600,000 products are repaired in the Nordics every year. They also implemented other sustainability initiatives, including selling refurbished phones with a 24-month guarantee.
“There are lots of innovative ways brands can succeed in this space, from product pages detailing the origin of materials to shops that offer in store sewing machines for repairing items,” Holst continues. “Of course they are also brands that go even further, for example by sharing what the CO2 footprint of a product is to show the tangible impact on the planet.”
Remember, sustainability isn't just about reducing emissions. It's about aligning your business with your customers' values.
4. Know your customer: Data will drive sales
Data is powerful, especially as a value exchange. Companies that have a data strategy in place and use technology to consolidate it, and create insights from it, can improve the way they communicate with and inspire their customers.
Dutch hardware retailer Gamma took a keen interest in knowing their customer’s shopping journeys and used consented first-party data to do so. They noticed 70% of their customers research online before going to the store.
"We used our own first-party data to understand what our customers were searching for, and what could potentially stand in the way of a purchase," explains Laurens Miedema, head of marketing at Gamma.
"Interestingly, we found that shipping prices were a key pain point for our customers. So, in response we implemented local inventory ads to show them where to find the product in a store nearby."
Then, they collected and connected consented data from the store visits and sales back into their advertising channels to gain a better understanding of their omnichannel return on ad spend. Seeing an increase in their omnichannel conversion value by 100%.
It’s clear from the findings that consumers now demand retailers provide a seamless shopping experience. By now, certain features, especially related to flexible fulfilment, are considered the basics in terms of their expectations.
To become ‘best-in-class’ retailers need to go beyond that, excelling in the way they create a relevant data exchange with their consumers and how they utilise the consented data; excelling in sustainability; excelling in building a strong single view of the customer and their inventory.
