It’s very easy to get excited about new technologies for shopping, particularly when they get a lot of press coverage. It’s also easy to get the impression that various new technologies are in more widespread use than they actually are.
Shoppercentric
It’s therefore interesting to see what a study carried out by an independent source such as Shoppercentric has to report. They asked shoppers which access points they had used in the last month as part of their journeys to purchase. The headline is that 87% used stores. This compares with 13% who reported using smartphones, 8% who used in-store touch screens and 5% who scanned QR codes.
Compared to some perhaps less independent surveys the use of these new technologies turns out to be less widespread than commonly perceived. However, even these results may be giving an overoptimistic view. What the results from Shoppercentric don’t tell is how many times each of these access points were used each month. Some technologies may have been used on only a limited number of occasions compared to stores.
Bricks and Mortar
There is definitely an important role in retail for many new technologies but we need to ensure that they don’t detract us from what is the main touch point for most retailers. Their physical stores.