Shoppers will be amazed by what's in store

Published on Tuesday 3 August 2004 12:06

RETAILING has come a long way over the past century, with an explosion in consumer power fuelling our desire for value, convenience and choice.

Technology has always played a key role in meeting this need - electronic checkouts, payment cards and online shopping have made the retail experience faster and more rewarding, while networked supply chain management and sophisticated business analysis tools allow retailers to reduce waste and give a better service.

But will this rapid progress continue into the next decade? Would we notice any difference walking into a supermarket in 2015 and, if so, what technologies might we see driving this change?

There have been a handful of concepts which have changed the shape of retailing. Self-service came early in the 20th century, followed by the supermarket and, in the late 90s, online shopping. This evolution is set to continue and progress over the next decade will be driven by information.

Customers will be given immediate access to an unprecedented level of data about the products they choose. Retailers will also benefit from greatly improved supply chain management, stock-tracking and greater understanding of customers and their habits.

From the customer’s perspective, personalisation will be the watchword. Bruce, a regular customer of FutureStore, our hypothetical 2015 food store, is on his way home from work when he receives a message on his smartphone, telling him that his favourite brand of pizza is on special offer.

On entering the store, Bruce’s wireless loyalty card is automatically scanned and the store manager, having been electronically alerted to his presence, is able to greet him by name. Bruce takes a trolley and swipes his loyalty card across its built-in Personal Shopping Assistant, which immediately recognises him and displays a summary of his last five shopping lists. He selects a list which resembles what he intends to buy on this trip, deletes a few items, adds his discounted pizzas and continues.

As well as charting Bruce’s most efficient path through the store, the PSA allows him to interact with his purchases in a way that is not possible in today’s high street. By scanning Radio Frequency Identification tags attached to each product - tiny wireless labels containing item, price and other data - Bruce’s PSA is able to "see" what he is looking at and automatically brings up detailed information.

The use of frequency identification tags will also greatly improve supply chain management for shop owners. In FutureStore, products are constantly tracked with a network of wireless sensors allowing real-time stocktaking. By linking this system directly into FutureStore’s central depot, staff can plan ahead, based on current inventory levels.

Enabling real-time two-way communication between the stores and the distribution network allows fluctuations in demand to feed right back along the supply chain to the producer. This results in a far more accurate and timely allocation of stock, improving efficiency by minimising the risk of over-producing, over-stocking or selling-out.

For both the customer and the employee, perhaps the most noticeable difference in our 2015 FutureStore will be the lack of a traditional checkout. Retail outlets of the next decade will take self-service to the next level by wirelessly scanning customers’ purchases as they leave the shop, automatically debiting their bank accounts and, finally, marking each item’s RFID tag as "paid-for".

Superficially, the store of 2015 will look similar to any supermarket you might walk into today. Behind the scenes, however, a host of technological tools will be relaying important information between partners in the supply chain, to employees on the shop-floor and straight into the hands of customers. This real-time information flow will greatly improve efficiency, give managers a detailed, useable picture of sales patterns and customer behaviour and present new opportunities for cross-selling.

• Gordon Thomson is country manager for Cisco Systems Scotland