A
key factor driving shoppers back to local stores on the high-street is the
lower cost now associated with cross-channel technologies that provide shoppers
with better in-store experiences. Technologies that give shoppers insight into
items that are available locally give them more confidence to venture into town
centres, brave the parking and crowds because they know what they want is
in-stock. Services like ‘click and collect’ mean the shopper won’t have to
queue up to purchase, and as consumers are ever-more adept at moving between
the online and physical stores, they increasingly favour the shopping
experiences that enable seamless shopping within their daily lives.
Rather
than seeing online as a threat to the high-street, many retailers have embraced
cross-channel strategies as a way to more efficiently manage their inventory
across their entire enterprise, eliminating the gap between their online and
offline channels. This has the knock-on effect that it gives shoppers more of
what they want: the ability to buy anything they want, when and how it suits
them.
Most
consumers still prefer to buy in stores, but increasingly they are researching
online first and they want to know that items are in-stock and ready for them
to take home. The cleverest of Britain’s high-street know this, and will
continue to drive the trend reported today.
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