The retail landscape is going through a metamorphosis. Western Europe’s economic climate is still difficult, with austerity showing little signs of relenting. This poses continued challenges for retailers and shoppers. But at the same time it is encouraging retailers to explore new avenues and innovative customer-centric solutions to boost increasingly squeezed margins.
The key to success hinges on retailers delivering value to European consumers. However, defining that value in a meaningful way has become increasingly complex as shopper needs and preferences become more sophisticated and demanding.
Now, more than ever, consumers in Western Europe:
Bricks and mortar retailers, meanwhile, are facing many of the same macro realities as consumers, including economic uncertainty, rising fuel and other costs, and urbanisation. Many are also struggling against market saturation and greater regulatory constraints. The continued rise of e-commerce – especially from players like Amazon – means that the competitive stakes are even higher.
Nevertheless, the retailers that understand and then convey the most value to consumers, stand to grow their sales and margins regardless of wider economic circumstances. To do that, they must answer the all too important question: what do their shoppers actually want?
According to latest IMF data from April 2013, real GDP growth across Western Europe remains low. The general economic situation is showing no signs of improving anytime soon. This bleak economic condition is impacting consumers’ shopping habits and demands. In turn, retailers are under heightened pressure to provide more value to their customers, looking beyond just low prices to include convenience, in-store shopping experiences and “retail-tainment”, and anytime, anywhere shopping. Responding to mounting market pressures is proving critical for Western Europe’s retailers.
To cope with an increasingly challenging, and already saturated, market landscape, retailers across Western Europe must improve efficiencies and better control costs to stave off both their competition and margin erosion. Innovative technology not only helps retailers to manage their costs, it can also convey added value to customers by reaching them wherever and whenever they feel in the mood to shop. To facilitate operational excellence, retailers can use automation and self-service technologies, as well as optimisation tools based on predictive analytics, to streamline supply chain efficiency. To better understand consumer demands and improve merchandise planning, they must focus on shopper interaction and tapping big data using predictive analytics. Finally, to serve customers seamlessly across channels, (near) real-time data access is now mandatory. With consumers becoming ever more tech-savvy, retailers must satisfy anytime, anywhere shopping in terms of services, price and fulfilment. This makes a targeted multi-channel strategy absolutely critical to success.
Don’t you think technology has a critical role to play in helping retailers to maximize efficiencies, streamline costs and fight margin erosion? Do write in with your views.
Hari Shetty- Vice President & Global Head Of Retail
Hari Shetty is part of the senior leadership team at Wipro and heads the Retail vertical across the globe. As head of Retail, he is responsible for strategy and execution of Wipro's business plan within the industry segment. Hari has been part of the Retail vertical since its inception and today Wipro is among the top 7 Retail technology service providers across the globe and provides services to 10 out of the top 20 retailers.
Hari has over 20 years of consulting experience in the industry. His experience spans across multiple functions in retail and he has worked with some of the best-in-class retailers on cross channel strategy, business transformation, simplification, predictive analytics, and technology transformation. Prior to his current role, he was responsible for technology and architecture in Retail and Consumer Goods industry groups.
Hari has multi-disciplinary background in technology, management, finance and law.
He is an evangelist on multi-channel retailing and strongly believes social media and a connected customer experience will change the face of retail.