Anytime shopping – how’s that possible?

“Click and collect” has arrived on the New Zealand retail scene – another step into the brave new world of anytime/anywhere shopping.

Since The Warehouse [NZX: WHS] opened its first “click and collect” store in central Auckland last September, people have been flocking in to pick up items purchased from the company’s online catalogues. We can expect to see The Warehouse extend the model to other centres before too long. 

Such stores will be small and largely devoid of stock, just a place for shoppers to collect what they have already selected and paid for.  Store location is critical because it’s all about customer convenience.

Anytime/anywhere shopping combines online and offline channels with strong personalisation in the way retailers offer products and services to consumers. The consumers should be able to browse and assess items either online or in a physical store and then purchase and receive with the same range of options. He or she might check out a product in a store, then shop around for the best price online – retailers find themselves being a “showroom” for competitors – or the reverse. In every instance, consumer preference is in the box seat.

This trend is global and accelerating, evident in both the explosive growth of online shopping and the continued innovation of bricks-and-mortar stores. Note, for example, Google Shopping – available in many countries though not yet New Zealand – the biggest web search engine now offers a “buy” button alongside its display of products searchable by category or key word. Meanwhile in Seattle, Amazon Books recently opened its first walk-in store with wooden bookshelves. So, in a move described as “back to the future,” the biggest online retailer is now also offering its customers the gratification of immediately owning the item they just purchased.

New Zealanders are definitely onboard with anytime/anywhere shopping. Online retail sales growth in this country is running at 14% a year and yet book retailers also report a bumper Christmas 2015 with people as keen as ever to get their hands on hard copy books in street front locations. 

Online retailing – and this includes the data analytics-driven targeting of products at individual consumers – has stimulated Kiwi consumer appetites for shopping in all its forms. BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander last month attributed our continued low consumer inflation rate partly to heightened price transparency and retail competition borne of online activity.

Globally, retailers are striving to develop and implement what they call “omni-channel” strategies. It means providing the consumer with consistent research, shopping, purchasing and fulfilment experiences regardless of the channel used for each function. Retailers must have an integrated presence on the web and the street, and be able to deliver seamlessly as the customer might require.

The Warehouse’s “click and collect” – just 30 square metres of store close to where thousands work or live -–makes perfect sense. So does the company’s “endless aisles” offer to retail any product in any of its catalogues through any of its 92 stores nationwide.

So how is all this possible in New Zealand and around the world? 

The answer lies, of course, in the increasing sophistication and take-up of digital technologies combined with economic globalisation. To consumers, faster and more readily accessible internet access is the key, especially with the swing to mobile devices in place of older laptop and desktop computers. 

To retailers, other technologies matter just as much – technologies for operating the long and complex supply chains required in a highly competitive, omnichannel world. And central to all is the simple imperative for standardised numbers, words and symbols for the identification and description of everything bought, sold, stored and shipped in those supply changes.  

In fact, the more complex the supply chains and the more “omni” the channels, the more important the standardisation of data about products, places and trading parties. In a globalised economy – New Zealand is an excellent example – that standardisation must surely be global.  A book or an item of clothing must be identified and described in a way that is instantly meaningful to a manufacturer, a distributor or a retailer, whether they are in Wenzhou, Wollongong or Wellington.

Supply chain participants, especially product brand owners and retailers, have long had a strong interest in there being "one view of the truth" on products from the point of manufacture to the consumer.  The ubiquitous GS1 barcode and its underlying global system of standardised identification and scanning using global trade item numbers (“barcode numbers”) came about 40 years ago for exactly this reason.

In the world of anytime/anywhere shopping, digital leaders – most notably Amazon, eBay and Google – are becoming more closely involved with GS1 at the global level, and driving use of these standards across the web to support their supply chains and strengthen their connection with consumers.

What if a would-be buyer of your product could not use their digital device for comparative shopping (aka the smartphone) to actually find your product?

Smart retailers and suppliers are learning how to embed global trade item numbers and other forms of standardised data into the language of the Internet (HTML) so their products can always be found using Google or other search engines.

None of this needs concern consumers. But global standardisation is critical to their browsing of products on the web or in-store, and to their ability to buy, receive or collect items how and when they choose.  For retailers, such standardisation is the only way to collaborate with trading partners and to be truly omnichannel in the consumer market while remaining competitive and profitable.

Dr Stevens is chief executive of GS1 New Zealand, part of the not-for-profit global organisation that develops and manages the GS1 data standards system on behalf of businesses and consumers in over 150 countries.

Tune into NBR Radio’s Sunday Business with Andrew Patterson on Sunday morning, for analysis and feature-length interviews.