At least 79 per cent of consumers in the country are willing to shift their online purchases from retailers that mostly operate through websites or apps to the one that has in-store automation facilities, according to a survey conducted by global consulting firm Capgemini.
The survey titled, ‘Smart stores: Re-booting the retail store through in store automation’ found that India was the second after China, surpassing a global average of 46 per cent that showed similar interest patterns among the overall surveyed consumers.
The trend was particularly seen catching up among the millennials, inarguably the most tech-savvy group. Most consumers believe automation can help to solve pain points they experience in-store including long checkout queues (66 per cent), difficulty in locating products (60 per cent), and products being out of stock (56 per cent).
The automation, thus has a strong tendency to bring a rise in sales of retailers who provide the in-store automation as customers are willing to shift 20-25 per cent of their purchases from online to in-store, it observed.
Moreover, customers expect that they would purchase 22 per cent more if the automation is introduced by retailers at their stores. The sales of retailers also reported an 11 per cent rise in sales in stores with automation compared to stores with no or low automation.
For India in particular, over three-fourth of consumers especially millennials prefer going to stores over shopping online if automation makes in-store experience engaging. It was observed that 90 per cent of consumers especially millennials are willing to shift their in-store purchases to retailers that use automation technology.
Further, 61 per cent of consumers have visited stores that use automation technologies. It stated that 80 per cent of consumers would spend more in stores with automation technology.
“Automation provides a huge opportunity for retailers to gain back the ground they’ve lost to digital-native competitors and protect the market share they currently have through better efficiency, more convenience, and better sustainability. Making the right investment choice and acknowledging the need for a range of deployments across functions could unlock significant potential across both operational and customer-facing department. Even in our technology-centric world it is rare to find one investment opportunity with such wide-reaching potential,” said Tim Bridges, global head, consumer goods and retail, Capgemini.
Interestingly, sustainaibility has been observed as a strong link that customers link with automation with 83 per cent of them think that such stores will offer more environment- friendly solutions compared to global average of 75 per cent.
Consumers said they would prefer to shop with retailers who use automation to reduce food waste (69 per cent), reduce consumables such as printed receipts (63 per cent), improve energy efficiency (58 per cent), and provide sustainability information regarding products (52 per cent). While the automation, overall seemed to appeal to a wide number of consumers, there were a few concerns.
Retailers, for example, were expected to be more rigorous about understanding customer needs and concerns. On customers front, 61 per cent of respondents felt that they were like an “unpaid sales assistant” when using a self-checkout.
CUSTOMERS AVOIDRECOGNITION
Overall 59 per cent of customers said they would avoid a store if it was using facial recognition to identify them (specifically 53 per cent in the UK, 60 per cent in the US and the Netherlands, 66 per cent in Germany)