customer journey in retail industry

Mapping the Retail Customer Journey: How to Get Started

Maximizing the Retail Supply Chain

How to revolutionize your brand approach to create a truly frictionless retail customer experience

The modern retail customer journey is sprawling, often spanning multiple channels and dozens of touchpoints or more. Each of these touchpoints represents an interaction between a consumer and a brand that has the potential to either convert a shopper into a buyer — or to drive them into the arms of a competitor. To avoid this second outcome, brands must make every effort to optimize each touchpoint, which first requires developing a holistic view of their companies’ customer journeys through journey mapping.

What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

A customer journey map is exactly what it sounds like: A visual representation of the various touchpoints an individual interacts with along their journey from prospect to the customer (and, in many cases, to advocate). Customer journey maps serve a valuable purpose, helping retailers better understand how their customers think, what their needs are, how and where they shop, and more — all with the goal of delivering more targeted brand messaging and consistent omnichannel service to nurture customers down the path.

Customer journey mapping — sometimes known as user journey mapping — requires brands to identify with their target audience and try to see things from their perspective. In doing so, retailers can develop a firsthand appreciation of the kinds of pain points their customers typically experience and proactively address those issues.

Mapping the retail customer journey also enables brands to identify and eliminate any gaps within their existing services and communications to ensure that customers are fully supported at every stage of the journey.

Why Customer Journey Mapping Matters

Although the retail customer journey might seem simple when taken at face value — a customer needs a product, finds one to their liking, and makes a purchase — it’s actually surprisingly complex.

No two customers are alike; each one comes with their own unique set of wants, needs, challenges, and expectations. To convince a prospective buyer to make a purchase — let alone become a loyal customer — a retailer must accommodate all of these elements and provide a highly personalized, end-to-end experience.

This is a tall order for any brand but mapping the customer journey can make things more manageable by providing retailers with a comprehensive view of all possible touchpoints and helping them understand the cause and effect of customer interactions.

But that’s not all — other benefits to mapping the retail customer journey include:

Deeper Insight: By placing themselves in the customer’s shoes, retailers gain valuable insight into how their customers think, feel, and act to better empathize with their overall experience. Brands can then channel this newfound perspective into designing customer journeys that meet actual consumer needs.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Another benefit to seeing things from the customer perspective is that brands can recognize problems and pain points within the buyer journey that they may have otherwise overlooked. With a fresh set of eyes, retailers can tackle these issues head on — and even proactively address future roadblocks — thereby minimizing customer frustration and allowing for a seamless experience.
Comprehensive Coverage: From in-store to online, the customer journey spans a wide variety of channels and individual touchpoints, with new ones emerging every day. Without a clear sense of all the potential ways customers might interact with their brand, retailers risk letting prospective buyers fall through the cracks. Customer journey mapping provides a comprehensive view of the entire user journey across all touchpoints, enabling retailers to see all eventualities and ensure they have total coverage, no matter where their customers shop.
Personalized Experiences: Mapping the retail customer journey can offer insight into how and where a brand’s customers prefer to shop. Armed with this information, retailers can interact with customers through their preferred channels and leverage data analysis — made possible through the use of a customer data platform — to deliver personalized communications and targeted offers.
Optimized Brand Messaging: With greater visibility into how customers interact with their brand, a retailer can develop a more accurate understanding of what messaging and which campaigns are most impactful, and at what stage in the journey to deploy them. And by plotting the entire retail customer journey from start to finish, brands can recognize potential gaps in coverage and fill them in as needed.
Cross-functional Stakeholder Alignment: From a business perspective, customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for driving stakeholder alignment because it clarifies business needs and priorities, provides valuable context for business decisions, and helps teams across the organization understand their role in supporting the customer journey.
Connected Journeys: The ideal retail customer journey should be, above all else, totally seamless and consistent. Shoppers should receive the same level of personalization and high-quality service regardless of where they are in their journey or which touchpoint they’re interacting with. In order to deliver this kind of cohesive experience, retailers need to be able to see all of the possible paths a buyer can take and the ways in which these paths flow together and diverge.

Key Stages of the Retail Customer Journey

Although no two customer journeys are identical, they tend to follow the same basic structure:

Awareness: During this initial stage, the customer becomes aware of a need they have or an issue they face, for which they’re eager to find a solution. Since the Awareness stage is often the first step of the customer journey, it tends to be heavily research-based — customers might talk to friends or family members to see if they have any recommendations or go online to get a sense of what options are available to them. From a brand perspective, the Awareness stage is their opportunity to engage with the customer and make them aware of the company’s products.
Consideration: A customer in the Consideration stage has completed their initial research, identified a few viable options, and is now evaluating those options against each other to see which best meets their needs. At this point, a brand has the customer’s full attention but needs to help them see the value their product can deliver. High-touch service is critical at this stage and could spell the difference between a customer choosing one company’s product over another.
Purchase: Having weighed their options, the customer is ready to make a purchase. Although the customer has made their decision, the retailer isn’t entirely off the hook — it’s important that the purchasing process be as easy and convenient as possible to avoid scaring the customer off at the last minute.
Retention: The customer has made an initial purchase with a brand — now it’s time to ensure that they keep coming back for more. Although loyalty rewards programs are a valuable touchpoint for the Retention stage, they’re only the beginning . Retailers should also solicit (and actually listen to) feedback and routinely reengage customers through personalized, high-value offers and messaging to maintain strong connections and build a long-lasting customer relationships .
Advocacy: The final, and perhaps most important, stage of the retail customer journey is the Advocacy stage. By this point, a retailer has earned itself not just a loyal customer, but one who’s willing to sing the praises of its brand to anyone who will listen. Key touchpoints in the Advocacy stage include online customer communities where loyal shoppers can interact with other brand advocates, referral programs, and special in-person events where customers can engage directly with the brand.

It’s important to note that each of these stages includes many individual touchpoints that span multiple channels. Customer journey mapping offers the perfect opportunity to capture an end-to-end view of all of these touchpoints and optimize them in order to make the buyer’s journey as seamless as possible.

Visualizing the Retail Customer Journey

Your customers are looking for shopping experiences that are seamless, personal, and joyful — data is the way to deliver them.

How to Create a Retail Customer Journey Map

At a high level, the process of creating a customer journey map should look something like this:

Establish the “why.” Although journey mapping is an essential process for any brand, it’s important to establish a clear reason for creating a journey map as well as to define goals and objectives at the outset. This not only imbues the journey mapping process with purpose, it also sets parameters and creates success metrics for continuous improvement.
List out all touchpoints. Each touchpoint represents a single interaction between a customer and a brand, during which a customer has the chance to form an opinion of that brand. Touchpoints can take many forms, from an in-person conversation with a sales associate, to reading a third-party review site, to a conversation with a chatbot . Listing out all touchpoints can be a significant undertaking — a single company can have hundreds of touchpoints, if not more. It’s an essential step of the journey mapping process because it provides valuable insight into which touchpoints customers engage with and how often, which can offer insight into how they think and feel.
Create buyer personas. A buyer persona is a fictionalized customer intended to represent a specific segment of a company’s target audience and to help contextualize how consumers within that segment might approach purchasing decisions. In order to ensure accuracy, buyer personas should be based on actual customer data, as well as feedback shared by existing customers. Each persona has its own unique set of needs, goals, and pain points and therefore its own distinct journey. Brands will want to narrow their focus and determine which personas are high priority when they first begin journey mapping.
Create a customer journey map. Or, as the case may be, multiple maps serve different buyer personas.
Visualize the journey. Once a retailer has mapped the journey, they need to undergo it themselves. This step is vital, as it provides brands with a firsthand perspective on which touchpoints require additional support. Data analytics can serve as a valuable second set of eyes, so to speak, at this stage because it can provide additional context about areas in need of improvement and insight into what changes need to be made.
Revisit the journey regularly. Customer journeys are constantly evolving, so it’s in brands’ best interest to go through this exercise on a routine basis. This is where many companies fall short: Although 75% of customer experience leaders report to using customer journey maps, only 56% treat theirs as a living document and keep them up-to-date. Failing to update customer journey maps according to changes in the marketplace and the emergence of new trends and channels increases the risk of buyers falling through the cracks and retailers losing out on business. Failing to update customer journey maps also means brands risk missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on new technologies, such as conversational artificial intelligence and intelligence derived from machine learning.

Beyond this general process, here are a few things retailers can do to ensure that their customer journey mapping experience is successful:

Talk to customers. Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes is a great start, but it’ll never be as valuable as going straight to the source. From surveys to user groups to reviews, there is a number of ways to solicit feedback from buyers and get their firsthand perspective on what the journey should look like.
Know that the journey isn’t linear. Although it would be ideal if all customers moved straight through the Awareness to Advocacy pipeline, many shoppers go through the first few stages only to backtrack. Understanding this is key because it enables brands to either build out new touchpoints or optimize existing touchpoints to get those prospective buyers back on track.
Understand the difference between journey mapping and experience mapping. Though closely related, customer journey and experience maps differ widely in scope. Customer journey maps typically focus on a single product or service and are a powerful tool for customer retention. Customer experience maps are much broader and span all of a company’s offerings and is often used to refine a brand’s marketing strategy.
Consider actions, emotions, and motivations. Many retailers only take customers’ actions into account when journey mapping. Going a step beyond to understand how customers feel at each stage of the journey and their underlying motivations paints a much more detailed picture and enables brands to mitigate any negative emotions consumers might experience as they shop.
Keep pain points in mind. One of the primary motivations behind customer journey mapping is to eliminate any obstacles that might prevent shoppers from making a purchase. With that in mind, it’s important that retailers both talk to consumers directly about what challenges they typically experience and leverage data analysis to identify — and solve — those pain points.
Streamline the journey. That means eliminating any unnecessary interactions that would slow the customer down or potentially cause frustration. Customers’ time is precious, and many do not want to jump through additional hoops to get the information they need, so it’s best to keep things simple.

Much like the journeys they represent, no two retailers’ customer journey maps will be exactly the same. The processes and best practices presented here should give brands a good head start, but it’s important to tailor each according to your company’s needs.

Develop Seamless Customer Journeys Through Data

In order to succeed in today’s cutthroat competitive retail landscape, brands must deliver seamless, customer-centric journeys and experiences — and data is the key to accomplishing that. To learn more, check out Hitachi Solutions’ very own customer journey infographic or contact us to speak directly to a solutions specialist.

Deb Marotta, VP of Retail Industry, Hitachi Solutions

The Who & What Behind the Blog

Deb Marotta, Vice President of Industry Strategy at Hitachi Solutions America, is a seasoned leader in the field of industry strategy and technology. Her broad-ranging expertise spans more than three decades, including a significant tenure as Global Dynamics AX Product Manager at Tectura Corporation. Deb's leadership roles at Hitachi Solutions America and prior experiences at Emtec underscore her commitment to driving innovative solutions and best practices across multiple industries. With her knowledge, strategic thinking, and industry insights, Deb offers in-depth, progressive content to this blog, dedicated to the ever-evolving landscape of industry technology solutions.

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Decoding the Retail Customer Journey: A Detailed Approach and Best Practices

Marie Jehanne

September 4, 2023 | 3 min read

Last Updated: Oct 17, 2023

Table of Contents

What is a Retail Customer Journey?

Why is understanding the journey important, key phases of the retail customer journey.

The retail customer journey , a critical concept in ecommerce and retail marketing, refers to the series of interactions a customer has from the initial product discovery to post-purchase experiences.

This process, influenced by consumer behavior, is not linear but a complex web of touchpoints across multiple channels and devices. It includes pre-purchase research, comparison shopping, the purchase decision, and post-purchase experiences. Understanding this journey is vital for retailers looking to optimize their sales funnel and drive sales.

Through a detailed analysis of the customer journey, retailers can identify key touchpoints, understand customer behavior, and tailor their product display and offerings to meet customer needs at each stage of the journey.

The retail customer journey is a comprehensive overview of consumer behavior and interaction with a brand or product. It encapsulates every step from the initial discovery to the final purchase decision and even post-purchase interactions.

This journey is not just a path to a transaction, but an insight into the customer experience with a brand. The retail customer journey is often segmented into stages such as awareness, consideration, and purchase, ending with brand loyalty. Each stage represents a different point in the customer’s interaction with your brand, and understanding these stages can help you better cater to your customers’ needs and expectations, thereby improving customer satisfaction.

See how your digital experience stacks up. Download the 2024 Retail Digital Experience Benchmark Report for the metrics that really matter.

Understanding the retail customer journey is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it provides valuable insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and needs. This information can be used to optimize retail marketing strategies, improve product offerings, and enhance the customer experience. Secondly, understanding the customer journey can help retailers identify opportunities for growth and improvement.

By analyzing the customer journey, retailers can pinpoint areas where they are losing customers, identify gaps in their service, and implement strategies to improve customer retention and satisfaction.

Understanding the customer journey can help retailers build stronger relationships with their customers. By understanding their needs and preferences, retailers can provide personalized experiences, build trust, and foster brand loyalty. This not only improves the customer experience but also drives repeat business and customer advocacy.

How to Create Customer-Centric Advertising Campaigns in 2021

The retail customer journey is a pivotal component of retail marketing, incorporating several key phases that reflect the consumer behavior. Each phase signifies a unique interaction point between the customer and the retailer, presenting opportunities for engagement, influence, and customer retention. Comprehending these phases is essential for retailers, as it enables them to customize their marketing strategies to cater to the specific needs and preferences of their customers at each stage of the sales funnel.

The awareness phase is the initial stage in the retail customer journey where potential customers become familiar with a retailer or their products. This can transpire through various channels such as ecommerce platforms, online advertisements, word of mouth, or direct marketing. The main objective during this phase is to pique the interest of potential customers, establishing brand recognition, and fostering brand loyalty.

The consideration phase ensues the awareness phase. This is a critical phase in the customer journey, as customers begin to evaluate the retailer’s offerings against those of competitors. They compare product display, prices, customer reviews, and other relevant factors. The goal during this phase is to position the retailer’s offerings as the most attractive option, influencing the customer’s purchase decision and enhancing customer satisfaction.

The decision phase is the final stage where customers make their ultimate purchase decision. Providing a seamless and positive customer experience during this phase is critical, ensuring the process of making a purchase is as straightforward and convenient as possible. This can be achieved by offering multiple payment options, providing clear and detailed product information, and delivering excellent customer service, thereby boosting customer satisfaction and fostering customer retention.

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Passionate about digital for several years, I am the Inbound Content Manager SEO at Contentsquare. My goal? To teach you how to improve the digital CX of your website and activate the right acquisition levers to generate more traffic on your site and therefore…more sales!

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Unraveling the Retail Customer Journey: A Comprehensive Guide to Effective Mapping

Customer journeys are the lifeblood of retail. Understanding the unique steps customers take from discovery to purchase is crucial.

In this article, we delve into the intricacies of retail customer journey mapping and its significance in today's rapidly evolving marketplace.

Let's embark on this enlightening voyage.

What Is A Retail Customer Journey Map?

A retail customer journey map is a visual story of your customers' interactions with your brand. It's a depiction of the path customers take from initial contact through to a long-term relationship.

It's a vital tool for understanding customer experience. By capturing all touchpoints and phases in the buying process, it enables businesses to identify opportunities and pain points.

The journey begins when a customer first becomes aware of your brand. This could be through advertising, word of mouth, or a search engine result.

The journey then continues as they gather information, make a decision to buy, and finally make a purchase.

After the purchase, the journey doesn't stop. How does the customer feel after buying? What's their experience with your after-sales service ? These questions form the final parts of the journey map.

By mapping the retail customer journey, brands can empathize better with their customers. It highlights where the customer's experience is smooth and where it's not.

This insight drives improvements in the overall shopping experience.

So, a retail customer journey map is more than a diagram. It's a catalyst for creating a better, more customer-centric business.

5 Phases Of The In-Store Customer Journey

Customers navigate various stages when interacting with a retail store.

Understanding these distinct phases is key to improving their shopping experience.

Let's delve into the five crucial stages of the in-store customer journey: Pre-visit, Entrance, Exploration, Purchase, and Post-Purchase.

Pre-visit Phase

The Pre-visit phase marks the beginning of the customer journey. It's when customers become aware of your brand and what it offers.

This could occur through online research, advertisements, or word-of-mouth recommendations.

During this phase, potential customers form their initial impressions of your brand.

They might visit your website or social media pages, read online reviews, or browse through your online catalog.

In essence, they're gathering information to decide whether your store meets their needs. This phase sets the tone for the customer's future interactions with your brand.

Ensuring a positive pre-visit experience is key to attracting potential customers to your physical store.

Also Read: Customer Journey Optimization

Entrance Phase

The Entrance phase begins when customers step into your physical store.

First impressions matter immensely, and this stage sets the tone for the entire shopping experience.

Here, customers form opinions about your store's ambiance, cleanliness, layout, and staff availability.

Factors like lighting, music, and in-store marketing materials can influence their overall perception.

Customers also start to gauge the level of customer service. They notice if staff members are welcoming and ready to assist.

They may also look for clear signage to guide their shopping journey.

The goal during the Entrance phase is to create a positive, inviting atmosphere. It's about making customers feel comfortable and eager to explore what you have to offer.

Exploration Phase

The Exploration phase is the heart of the in-store shopping experience . This is where customers dive into your product offerings and evaluate their options.

During this phase, customers browse through your store, interact with products, and compare different items.

The organization of your merchandise, the quality of the product displays, and the ease of finding desired items all play crucial roles.

In-store staff can greatly influence this stage. Their product knowledge, helpfulness, and ability to cater to customer needs can enhance the shopping experience.

The goal here is to provide a seamless and enjoyable exploration experience.

When customers feel well-served and find what they're looking for easily, they're more likely to make a purchase.

Purchase Phase

The Purchase phase is the pivotal moment when a customer decides to buy.

This stage revolves around the checkout process and the final steps that lead to a successful transaction.

Here, customers evaluate their chosen products one last time before making the final decision. They consider factors like price, quality, and perceived value.

The ease of the checkout process also plays a significant role.

At this point, friendly and efficient customer service can make a substantial difference.

Quick checkout lines, multiple payment options, and proactive assistance can help seal the deal.

The goal in the Purchase phase is to make the transaction as smooth as possible. Any hiccups at this stage could deter a customer from completing their purchase.

Post-Purchase Phase

The Post-Purchase phase happens after customers have made their purchase and left your store.

It's about fostering a long-term relationship with them, ensuring they're satisfied, and encouraging them to return.

This phase includes elements like customer service support, return or exchange policies, and feedback collection.

Your engagement with the customer during this time can greatly affect their overall perception of your brand.

Remember, a positive post-purchase experience can turn one-time shoppers into loyal customers.

It can also lead to positive word-of-mouth marketing, boosting your brand's reputation.

The goal here is to leave a lasting impression, ensuring that the customer feels valued and appreciated.

It's about turning a single transaction into an ongoing relationship.

How To Build A Retail Customer Journey Map

Creating a retail customer journey map is a strategic process. It involves data collection, identifying touchpoints, and ongoing revisions.

In the following section, we'll guide you through a step-by-step process to create your own customer journey map, helping you to better understand and enhance your customer's experience.

Keep Tracking & Analytics Tools Ready

With your goal set, the next step is to prepare your tracking and analytics tools.

These are vital for gathering data about your customers and their interactions with your brand.

Your tracking tools could include a website analytics tool like Google Analytics, which provides insights into how customers interact with your online platforms.

Heat mapping tools can also be beneficial for understanding on-page customer behavior.

In-store, consider using tools like customer feedback surveys, mystery shopping, and point-of-sale data analysis.

Technologies like Wi-Fi analytics or people counting cameras can also provide data about in-store customer behavior.

These tools help you gather quantitative data, such as how many people visited your store or website, what they purchased, and how much time they spent.

Having your tracking and analytics tools ready ensures you have reliable data to build your customer journey map.

Collect Data

Once your tools are set up, it's time to collect data. Your goal here is to gather as much information as possible about your customers and their shopping behavior.

Start by gathering demographic data. Who are your customers? What are their ages, genders, locations, and income levels?

This information can help you understand who you're serving and what they might expect from your brand.

Next, collect behavioral data. What are customers buying? When are they visiting your store or website? How much time are they spending? This can reveal patterns in shopping behavior.

Don't forget about attitudinal data. How do customers feel about your brand?

You can gather this information through surveys, feedback forms, or social media sentiment analysis.

The more comprehensive your data collection, the more detailed and accurate your customer journey map will be.

Understanding your customer's behaviors, attitudes, and demographics is key to crafting an effective map.

Identify All The Possible Touchpoints

After collecting data, the next step is to identify all the possible touchpoints.

Touchpoints are the various ways customers interact with your brand, from initial discovery to post-purchase.

These might include your website, social media platforms, email newsletters, in-store interactions, customer service, and even word-of-mouth referrals.

Remember to consider both online and offline touchpoints.

Examine each touchpoint from your customer's perspective. What are they experiencing at each stage? Are there any obstacles or frustrations they encounter? What moments delight them?

Mapping out these touchpoints gives you a comprehensive view of your customer's journey.

It highlights areas where you're providing excellent service and where you might be falling short.

Identifying all possible touchpoints is crucial to building an accurate customer journey map.

It's the step that brings your map to life, illuminating the path your customers follow when interacting with your brand.

Plan The Journey Map

With your data and touchpoints identified, it's time to plan your journey map.

This visual representation of your customer's experience will help you see their path through their eyes.

Start by plotting out the stages of the customer journey we discussed earlier: pre-visit, entrance, exploration, purchase, and post-purchase.

Then, populate each stage with the relevant touchpoints.

Use the data you collected to depict what happens at each touchpoint. Highlight areas of customer friction and delight. Include customer thoughts, feelings, and expectations.

Your map could be a simple flowchart, a storyboard, or an intricate infographic. Choose a format that suits your needs and preferences.

Remember, the purpose is to facilitate understanding of your customer's experience.

Creating a journey map is like piecing together a puzzle. Each touchpoint, each piece of data, adds to the overall picture of your customer's journey with your brand.

Take Feedback & Revise The Map

Once your customer journey map is drafted, it's essential to seek feedback and be ready for revisions.

Your map should be a living document, continually updated as you gain new insights and as your customers' behaviors evolve.

Share the map with your team, especially those who interact directly with customers. Their frontline experience can offer valuable insights.

Are there touchpoints they feel have been overlooked? Do they have suggestions for improving customer experiences at specific stages?

Next, seek feedback from your customers. Use surveys or interviews to understand if your map aligns with their actual experiences.

They are the ultimate source of truth about the customer journey.

Finally, use the feedback to revise your map. Make necessary adjustments to reflect the most accurate customer journey.

Remember, creating a customer journey map is an ongoing process, not a one-time task. Regular revisions ensure your map stays relevant and valuable.

The Best Examples Of Retail Customer Journey Maps

Zara's customer journey starts with creating a buzz around its fast-fashion model.

Through social media platforms and window displays, Zara attracts customers with their fresh, trendsetting styles.

Once in-store, customers are greeted by well-organized, frequently updated merchandise that encourages exploration.

The purchase phase is expedited by helpful staff, clear price tags, and multiple payment options.

After purchase, Zara keeps customers engaged through email newsletters, featuring new collections and fashion tips.

The seamless integration of online and offline channels enhances Zara's customer journey.

2. Starbucks

The Starbucks journey begins with its strong brand presence and enticing aroma. The entrance phase is about welcoming customers into a comfortable, cozy space.

During the exploration phase, customers choose from a wide range of beverages and food items, with staff readily available to assist.

The purchase phase includes an easy, efficient payment process and the Starbucks rewards program.

Post-purchase, Starbucks engages customers through the mobile app, offering personalized deals and rewards for loyal customers.

IKEA's journey starts with its catalog and website showcasing stylish, affordable furniture.

In-store, customers enter a well-planned route displaying various room setups, sparking inspiration.

During the exploration phase, customers interact with the products in home-like settings.

At the purchase phase, customers are guided to the warehouse to pick up flat-packed products, with staff available for assistance.

Post-purchase, IKEA provides detailed assembly instructions and customer service for any issues, reinforcing IKEA’s commitment to customer satisfaction.

Understanding the retail customer journey is paramount in today's competitive marketplace.

By mapping this journey, brands can uncover key insights to improve customer experiences and drive loyalty.

It's an ongoing process that requires continuous tracking, analysis, and improvement. Start your journey mapping today and unlock a new level of customer-centric success.

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Mapping the retail customer journey

13 jul 2023 | by olivia parkes.

Your customer’s journey is seldom linear. In fact, most customer journeys span multiple channels and touchpoints before they purchase.

Retail is a highly competitive industry, so it’s important you acknowledge and target your customers’ interactions before, during and after their purchase. To understand your customers’ journey and to encourage them to convert, you can create a customer journey map. Mapping the retail customer journey can give your business a complete overview of all the touch points between your brand and your customers, and how to optimise them, to ensure you’re meeting their needs.

In this blog, we’ll explain how you can go about mapping your retail customer journey and how a customer journey map can benefit both your business and customers.

What is a customer journey map?

From an outsider’s perspective, a customer’s journey may seem simple - a business sells a product and the customer buys it. But customer journeys are far more complex than that, often taking several customer touchpoints for a customer to convert. In fact, on average it takes eight touchpoints to close a sale . That’s where a retail customer journey map can help you.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer (or buyer) journey covering every engagement your customer has with your brand, service or product. The customer journey in retail is one of the multiple touchpoints, from how they first heard of your brand to the direct interactions they have with your sales or social team. Having a customer journey map in place can help you to understand your customers’ behaviours so you can ensure you’re meeting their needs and expectations.

The journey map covers all the actions your customer takes to complete an objective, such as following you on Instagram, visiting a store or making a purchase. This visual storyline can offer you valuable insight into your customers’ thought processes, so you can target and engage with them at every step of their journey.

What are the steps in the retail customer journey?

The customer journey is no longer a straight line and is much more complex than ever before. In fact, the multitude of touch points available to customers creates diverging paths, with customers move back and forth along their journey depending on their unique circumstances. Typically, the retail customer journey tends to follow five stages, with a number of touchpoints in each stage.

Remember, your role is to acknowledge the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through these stages. You’ll be taking control of each touchpoint at every stage of the journey

Here, we’ll uncover the five stages that make up the customer journey:

1. Awareness

During this first stage, the customer becomes aware of the ‘problem’ they’re looking to solve. This ‘problem’ may be a want or need for a particular product or service, and their goal is to alleviate the problem or find a solution to it. With this being the first stage of their journey, customers tend to spend a lot of time researching to see what options are available to them. They might ask friends for recommendations or go online to browse what’s out there.

As a business, the Awareness stage gives you the chance to engage with your customer and make them aware of your product or service, and how it can help them.

2. Consideration

The next stage in the retail customer journey is known as Consideration. At this stage, the customer will have completed their initial research and defined what their problem is. Now, they’ll be looking to solve their problem and compare their options against each other to decide which best meets their needs. At this stage, you’ll have your customer’s attention but will need to show them how your product or service can help them, so they choose you over your competitors.

3. Decision

As the name suggests, this is the stage where your customer has decided on their solution to their problem and is now ready to buy. They’ll now compare products or services from different businesses to decide which suits them best. At this point, it’s important that the checkout process is as easy and straightforward as possible, so your customer isn’t deterred at the last minute. This is true for the customer journey both in-store and online.

4. Retention/Loyalty

So, your customer has made their initial purchase with you. Now, you’ll need to put the work in so they come back for more. Once the customer is satisfied with their purchase and the ‘problem’ is recurring, they’ll enter the loyalty or retention phase of the retail customer journey. Try to regularly re-engage with your customers and reward them for their loyalty so they return to your business in the future. Personalised messaging, promotional codes and a rewards scheme can help you to maintain a strong connection.

5. Advocacy

The final stage of the retail customer journey, and perhaps the most important stage, is Advocacy. By this stage you’ve not just earned a loyal customer, but one who will advocate for your brand by recommending it to their network. Advocacy is often underestimated and can be a key contributor to your business growth. Key touchpoints in this stage include online customer communities where your customers can interact with other advocates, referral programmes and in-person events where they can engage with your brand directly.

Remember, each of the above stages includes several individual touchpoints where you’ll meet your customers. With the help of your customer journey map, you’ll take ownership of each touchpoint at every stage of their journey.

What is the process of mapping the retail customer journey?

While your customer journey map will be unique to your business, there are some key areas that are often included:

The customer journey/buying process: As mentioned, there are five stages to the customer journey, which you can use to chart your customer’s path from their first interaction with your brand, to their last.
Pain points: Why are your customers looking for your product/service? There’s usually a pain point that’s causing their problem. Adding these pain points to your customer journey map can help you identify how your customer is feeling at each stage and the reasons why, for you to empathise with their situation.
Customer emotions: It’s important to acknowledge your customers’ emotions at each stage of their journey. After all, they’re looking at your product/service to help them solve a problem, so it’s likely they’re feeling a certain way such as frustrated or confused. Including these emotions in your retail customer journey map can help you identify these emotions and find ways to alleviate them.
Solutions: Once you’ve identified the problems your customers are facing, you’ll need to find ways to mitigate them. These solutions can improve your buying process so customers face fewer problems during their customer journey, which can improve their overall customer experience.

Finding your customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints are any circumstance where your customer makes contact with or forms an opinion of your business. These touchpoints can be anything from a direct interaction with an employee, a social media ad or even a customer review. Here are just some potential customer touchpoints to consider:

Online or print advertisements
Landing pages
Social media
Product reviews
TV advertisements
Product launch events

But how do you find your customer touchpoints? The first step is to fully identify with your customer - put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself where you’d turn to if you had a problem that needed solving. You could also ask your customers questions through a survey to make sure what you perceive as their experience is accurate.

Once you have a list of potential touchpoints, you can map your customer’s journey from pre-sale to post-sale, to analyse their entire customer experience. Customer journey maps can help you to analyse your customers’ behaviour across touchpoints to see the path they take when interacting with your business.

Remember, your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials. Perhaps a customer heard of your brand through a friend’s recommendation, for example - a touchpoint you might not have direct control over. Make sure you consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map to identify opportunities for improvement across your business.

How to map the retail customer journey for your business

We’ve explored the steps in the retail customer journey and how to find your customers’ touchpoints. Now you’re ready to map the retail customer journey for your business. Here, we’ll explain step-by-step how to create your customer journey map:

Set your goals and objectives: Before you get started on the map itself, you’ll need to establish clear and measurable goals. What are you looking to achieve from the customer journey map? If you don’t already have them in place, now is the time to create buyer personas - fictional customers that represent your potential buyers. By having an idea of the customer you’re targeting, you can direct your customer map towards them.
Persona research: Gather as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is geared towards. Get customer feedback through questionnaires or interviews from real customers or prospects, so you can really get to know them. From there, you’ll have data that really reflects the values of your customers.
Find your customer touchpoints: You should now have a list of the touchpoints your customers are using, which can give you insight into how your customers are interacting with your brand. Remember to include information about the emotions and challenges related to each touchpoint.
Actions and motivations: Make a list of your customers’ actions when interacting with your brand, such as opening an email or ‘liking’ your social media post. Then try to identify the emotions or motivations a customer has with each action they make. Your customers’ emotions are likely to vary depending on which stage of their journey they’re at. Knowing what actions your customers are taking at each stage of their journey, and how they’re feeling during them, can help you to provide the right content at the right time.
Look at your resources: Do you have the resources you need to offer the best customer experience? Your customer journey map offers a complete picture of your business and how your resource is being used to help your customers. You can use the map to assess which touchpoints need focusing on, and if you need to invest more resources to meet your goals.
Analysis: Analysis is an important part of creating a customer journey map. Look at your data and which areas need more support. You should be able to spot which areas aren’t meeting customers’ needs and decide on methods to improve them. Take the customer journey yourself and see if anything is missing so you can provide the best customer experience possible.
Make changes: Now you have a visualisation of what the customer journey looks like, you can make the necessary changes to make your business what you want it to be. The customer journey map should offer insight into the needs of your customers at each point of their journey, so you’ll know what changes need to be made to address their pain points. To test which changes work best, you can try A/B testing to see which variation your customers respond to best.

How Apteco can help you track your customers

Say goodbye to complicated dashboards by harnessing the power of your customer data with Apteco. Our data visualisations make it easy to understand your audience stats, so you can make data-led decisions that drive conversions, increase sales and improve your customer experience. Apteco software can give you a complete picture of your customer data, so you can map the retail customer journey with ease.

Check out how we can support your retail business , and when you’re ready book a demo today to get started.

Digital Marketing and Media Specialist

Olivia joined the Apteco team in 2022 to boost the Apteco brand, improve the Search Engine Optimisation, create engaging content to push the Apteco platforms as well as sponsored advertisements. Olivia is CIM qualified and has seven years of marketing experience working in a variety of sectors.

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Automating the retail customer journey through technology

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Jennifer Marchand

Google Cloud COE Leader, Capgemini

Tharun Tharian

Head of Global System Integrator Partner Marketing, Google Cloud

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Editor’s note : To kick off the new year and in preparation for NRF The Big Show, we invited partners from across our retail ecosystem to share stories, best practices, and tips and tricks on how they are helping retailers transform during a time that continues to see tremendous change. Please enjoy this entry from our partner.

If you put a pot of water on the stove, it doesn’t heat up instantly. It simmers slowly at first, eventually picking up steam to reach a rolling boil. The retail landscape is not so different. Capgemini’s research shows the sector has evolved over four generations, from the early days of fragmented outlets to omnichannel and customer-centric focuses, with a fifth generation on the horizon that promises to be centered on consumption.

Generation 1 : Fragmented outlets

Generation 2 : Chain concentration

Generation 3 : Omnichannel

Generation 4 : Consumer-centric

Generation 5 : Consumption-centric

Although incremental change allows companies to experiment and iterate during their digital journeys, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated the evolution of online and contactless shopping. Evolution became a revolution, with most Consumer Product and Retail (CPR) companies still mastering the omnichannel generation of their digital transformation to create a seamless shopping experience. Companies that are more digitally mature are already aspiring to the consumer-centric phase, embracing opportunities made possible by technology such as personalization and automation.

What consumers want

Customers have more choices in how they shop and engage with brands. This has made it harder for brands to predict and anticipate needs across customer journeys. And that’s convincing some companies to innovate more quickly as consumer demand drives the need for speed and scale.

Think about your own online behavior. Say you’re shopping for an item and searching online for the closest store in your neighborhood. Google is likely your go-to for finding that information. Looking to troubleshoot an issue with a product or seek out a service? Again, you’ll likely hit up Google first, not even considering going directly to a brand’s website for answers.

Both scenarios point to a disconnect between virtual and physical worlds, a gap technology can bridge in numerous ways such as breaking down silos and integrating fragmented media channels. Interestingly, though, not everything will be centered online all the time. In our recent study on consumer behavior, The great consumer reset , Capgemini discovered 57 percent of shoppers plan to return to brick-and-mortar stores post-pandemic, which is basically unchanged from the 59 percent who often interacted with physical stores before.

But business as usual? Not even close. Consumers have come to expect a frictionless shopping experience (buy online, pick up in store) or an immersive one (products displayed online using augmented reality), and are not content to return to in-store lineups, empty shelves, or a one-size-fits-all approach. Moreover, customers want personalized interactions while ensuring their data and privacy are protected.

So the role of the store is changing. In fact, many online-only brands are opening brick-and-mortar establishments to drive customer experience. In our research on “smart stores,” we found the majority of consumers (66 percent) believe automation can improve their shopping experience by solving the challenges they face at retail stores.

From personalization to serendipity

Retailers must recognize that they have to win consumer trust and confidence. Many consumers believe retailers’ use of tech is focused on reducing costs rather than easing friction. And they’re right. That same Capgemini research found that only one-third (35 percent) of retailers consider “solving customer pain points” as the most important criteria when deciding which automation use cases to implement.

“Retailers are largely in the early stages of adopting automation, and that’s an opportunity to rethink how they’re using technology, not just to smooth out friction and engender consumer trust but to build unexpected consumer benefits,” says Neerav Vyas, Head of Customer First, Co-Chief Innovation Officer, Insights & Data, North America, Capgemini. “We’re trying to move towards this idea of delivering serendipitous experiences to bridge the physical and digital divide.”

The focus is not solely on shoppers seeking out a specific product. “When consumers are in an exploratory mood, retailers can recommend products and services customers didn’t even know they wanted,” says Vyas. For example, business teams that use personalization platforms as part of an integrated media strategy can optimize algorithms against outcomes such as improving conversion and driving engagement.

Vyas says the elevated experience from “personalization to serendipity” fosters trust in the ability of recommendation architectures to persuade and influence consumers’ choices in beneficial ways. A case in point: our research found that half (52 percent) of spending by millennials goes towards experience-related purchases. As always, the key is to meet consumers where they are. Even better, according to Vyas, is to anticipate and understand when signals like customer intent are changing.

How to create value throughout the customer journey

One solution companies can implement right now is an integrated media spend platform that incorporates reporting, planning, and strategy across the entire customer journey. This offers value throughout the customer journey by using technology to reduce friction along the way. Think of it as starting with the customer looking for a product ( search and discovery ), moving on to the purchase (omnichannel basket, “shoppable” screens) and pick up/delivery (QR code scan in store), and through to post-purchase engagement with the retailer ( Google Contact Center AI ).

Such a holistic approach also accelerates data acquisition, integration, and reporting using advanced analytics to break down silos and emphasize the importance of privacy and first-party data. This in turn guides end-to-end interventions across customer journeys that enable optimized media spend, empowers businesses to analyze their spend distribution, fine-tunes owned and paid tactics with agencies, and promotes stewardship to support audit efficacy.

A culture of experimentation

With this data-driven focus, CPRs can create a 360-degree perspective of the customer. That intelligence can be used to enhance and humanize automated shopping experiences by putting the customer in control, whether online, in store, or across company brands. Moreover, by using Google Cloud’s emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) , we help companies accelerate value across the spectrum, from supply-chain optimization and customer innovation to consumer experience.

Building a culture of experimentation is a team effort. “It's not ever just one person who had a big idea. It’s all incremental steps,” says Jennifer Marchand, Google Cloud COE Leader, Capgemini. “Finding the right use case and timing is everything.” Take Google Glass Enterprise , she continues. For greater consumer experience, it can enable in-store associates to better serve with hands-free checkout, customer personalization and recommendations, and special offers. At the same time, Computer Vision and Smart Shelves can help prioritize tasks for employees, notifying them of low stock or a spill in the store.

Marchand points out that companies and consumers alike might not be ready to fully adopt some technology like facial recognition, but since almost everyone has a smartphone these days, they can benefit from automation with ease. “What’s interesting,” she adds, “is the way Google thinks about these types of problems, solving them for the long term.”

The store of tomorrow

Imagine a truly frictionless shopping experience, where state-of-the-art computer vision and AI identifies the products you pick up, put back, and keep, allowing you to head home, completely bypassing the checkout, with a 99 percent accuracy rate and receipts sent directly to your mobile app. That utopian experience is already taking shape at CornerShop, Capgemini’s live experimental store in London, UK.

Jamie MacLoud, Transformation & Strategy Consultant at frog, part of Capgemini, describes the retail space, which runs on Google Cloud, as the store of tomorrow, and not the distant future. It’s an experiential space where retailers and brands can explore, develop, and test technological shopping innovations in real-time. The outcome is a clearer understanding of how digital innovation can enable new ways to progress the customer experience, improve in-store operations, and help consumers to rediscover the joy of in-person retail through new ways to shop and engage with brands.

“We build, test, and learn about store concepts of tomorrow that we believe could be implemented into actual stores in the next one to two years. Getting these experiences in front of real customers in the CornerShop allows us to generate tangible learnings that we can share with our clients and use to shape future store strategy” says MacLeod. CornerShop was opened to the public in two eight-week stints, which allowed real-time testing to see what technologies resonated with customers, which brands can adapt and scale. Frictionless checkout, not surprisingly, was a big win for customers, but the technology underpinning the “virtual try-on” of clothing was deemed more suitable for the store of the future.

So, unlike an innovation lab, CornerShop lets companies experiment risk free, speeding up the process from hypothesis to full-scale implementation. It’s also another step toward solving the challenges customers face, while delivering those serendipitous experiences that build brand loyalty and longevity.

Learn more about how Capgemini is partnering with Google Cloud to help retailers create next-generation shopping experiences today.

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Cookie message, understanding and mapping the retail customer journey.

Your customer’s journey is seldom linear. In fact, most customer journeys span multiple channels and touchpoints before they purchase.

In this blog, we’ll explain how you can go about mapping your retail customer journey and how a customer journey map can benefit both your business and customers.

What is a customer journey map?

What are the steps in the retail customer journey?

Here, we’ll uncover the five stages that make up the customer journey:

1. Awareness

As a business, the Awareness stage gives you the chance to engage with your customer and make them aware of your product or service, and how it can help them.

2. Consideration

3. Decision

4. Retention/Loyalty

5. Advocacy

What is the process of mapping the retail customer journey?

While your customer journey map will be unique to your business, there are some key areas that are often included:

The customer journey/buying process: As mentioned, there are five stages to the customer journey, which you can use to chart your customer’s path from their first interaction with your brand, to their last.
Pain points: Why are your customers looking for your product/service? There’s usually a pain point that’s causing their problem. Adding these pain points to your customer journey map can help you identify how your customer is feeling at each stage and the reasons why, for you to empathise with their situation.
Customer emotions: It’s important to acknowledge your customers’ emotions at each stage of their journey. After all, they’re looking at your product/service to help them solve a problem, so it’s likely they’re feeling a certain way such as frustrated or confused. Including these emotions in your retail customer journey map can help you identify these emotions and find ways to alleviate them.
Solutions: Once you’ve identified the problems your customers are facing, you’ll need to find ways to mitigate them. These solutions can improve your buying process so customers face fewer problems during their customer journey, which can improve their overall customer experience.

Finding your customer touchpoints

Online or print advertisements
Landing pages
Social media
Product reviews
TV advertisements
Product launch events

How to map the retail customer journey for your business

Set your goals and objectives: Before you get started on the map itself, you’ll need to establish clear and measurable goals. What are you looking to achieve from the customer journey map? If you don’t already have them in place, now is the time to create buyer personas - fictional customers that represent your potential buyers. By having an idea of the customer you’re targeting, you can direct your customer map towards them.
Persona research: Gather as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is geared towards. Get customer feedback through questionnaires or interviews from real customers or prospects, so you can really get to know them. From there, you’ll have data that really reflects the values of your customers.
Find your customer touchpoints: You should now have a list of the touchpoints your customers are using, which can give you insight into how your customers are interacting with your brand. Remember to include information about the emotions and challenges related to each touchpoint.
Actions and motivations: Make a list of your customers’ actions when interacting with your brand, such as opening an email or ‘liking’ your social media post. Then try to identify the emotions or motivations a customer has with each action they make. Your customers’ emotions are likely to vary depending on which stage of their journey they’re at. Knowing what actions your customers are taking at each stage of their journey, and how they’re feeling during them, can help you to provide the right content at the right time.
Look at your resources: Do you have the resources you need to offer the best customer experience? Your customer journey map offers a complete picture of your business and how your resource is being used to help your customers. You can use the map to assess which touchpoints need focusing on, and if you need to invest more resources to meet your goals.
Analysis: Analysis is an important part of creating a customer journey map. Look at your data and which areas need more support. You should be able to spot which areas aren’t meeting customers’ needs and decide on methods to improve them. Take the customer journey yourself and see if anything is missing so you can provide the best customer experience possible.
Make changes: Now you have a visualisation of what the customer journey looks like, you can make the necessary changes to make your business what you want it to be. The customer journey map should offer insight into the needs of your customers at each point of their journey, so you’ll know what changes need to be made to address their pain points. To test which changes work best, you can try A/B testing to see which variation your customers respond to best.

How Apteco can help you track your customers

Say goodbye to complicated dashboards by harnessing the power of your customer data with Apteco. Their data visualisations make it easy to understand your audience stats, so you can make data-led decisions that drive conversions, increase sales and improve your customer experience. Apteco software can give you a complete picture of your customer data, so you can map the retail customer journey with ease.

Check out how they can support your retail business , and when you’re ready book a demo today to get started.

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Influencing the Retail Customer Journey: Tips for Enterprise Retail CMOs

What are the stages of the retail customer journey.

The 5 stages of a retail customer journey typically include Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Experience, and Loyalty.

This stage is about capturing the customer’s attention and making them aware of your brand and offerings.

In the case of fashion retail, a potential customer might come across an online ad showcasing trendy clothing and accessories from a specific brand while browsing social media.

In grocery retail, a customer might see a TV commercial highlighting a supermarket’s fresh produce and competitive prices.

Consideration:

At this stage, the customer shows interest and begins evaluating different options.

In fashion retail, the customer might visit the brand’s website to explore the product range, read customer reviews, and compare prices.

In grocery retail, a customer might research different supermarkets, considering factors such as location, product selection, and deals.

This stage involves the customer making the final decision to purchase a product.

In fashion retail, the customer might add desired items to their online shopping cart and proceed to checkout.

In grocery retail, the customer may visit the chosen supermarket, select the desired groceries, and complete the transaction at the checkout counter.

Experience:

After the purchase, the customer’s experience and satisfaction become crucial.

In fashion retail, the customer may receive an order confirmation email and subsequent shipping updates. Upon receiving the package, they may try on the clothes and assess their fit and quality.

In grocery retail, the customer may assess the freshness and quality of the purchased items and evaluate the overall shopping experience.

This stage focuses on building customer loyalty and transforming them into advocates for your brand.

In fashion retail, a satisfied customer may leave a positive review, recommend the brand to friends, or post pictures wearing the purchased items on social media.

In grocery retail, a loyal customer may join a loyalty program, provide feedback, or share positive experiences with others, driving word-of-mouth recommendations.

An example of customer journey in Fashion Retail:

Awareness: A fashion-conscious individual scrolling through their Instagram feed comes across an ad for a trendy clothing brand showcasing stylish outfits.
Consideration: Intrigued, they visit the brand’s website, browse through different collections, read reviews, and compare prices with other similar brands.
Purchase: After selecting the desired items, they add them to their online shopping cart and complete the purchase by providing payment and shipping information.
Experience: They eagerly await the package, which arrives a few days later. Upon trying on the clothes, they find that they fit perfectly and are impressed with the quality.
Loyalty: Delighted with their purchase, they leave a positive review on the brand’s website, share pictures of their outfits on social media, and recommend the brand to their fashion-forward friends.

An example of customer journey in Grocery Retail:

Awareness: A person sees a TV commercial highlighting a supermarket’s extensive range of fresh produce, affordable prices, and convenient locations.
Consideration: Intrigued by the commercial, they research the supermarket’s offerings, compare it with other nearby options, and read online reviews to assess the quality and selection of groceries.
Purchase: They decide to visit the supermarket, select the desired groceries, and proceed to the checkout counter to complete the transaction.
Experience: Upon reaching home, they assess the freshness and quality of the purchased items, check if all items are as expected, and evaluate the overall shopping experience.
Loyalty: Impressed with the supermarket’s wide range of products, competitive prices, and pleasant shopping experience, they join the loyalty program, provide feedback on their experience, and recommend the supermarket to friends and family.

Here’s where it gets interesting: TOP customers deliver PROFITS

McCarthy and Winer also researched the profitability of their top customer segments. They found the top 20% of customers generated 105 to 113% of net income.

You might wonder how a small group of customers could be worth more that 100% of net income.

This is possible because not every customer is profitable. The customers who are highly profitable compensate for the customers who are served at a loss.

The power of customer retention through loyalty programs is amplified when considering research from Bain & Co., which showed that when companies improve their customer retention rate by as little as 5%, they see an increase in profit of 25 to 95%.

In other words, if you motivate just 5% more of your customers to stick with you, your profits can jump considerably.

How to influence the Retail Customer Journey?

Let’s look at 5 specific strategies to influence the customer journey

Find high-impact moments in the retail customer journey

We are talking about those “moments that matter”, the specific interactions that trigger a customers’ feelings and leave lasting impressions.

To identify high-impact moments, a retailer needs to map out the full customer journey with the various touchpoints, and only then highlight those that really matter most. In reality, not every touchpoint and every experience is as impactful as others in creating healthy and long-lasting relationships.

Consider the Peak-End Rule, which states the following:

The typical consumer’s memory of a customer experience is not the average of all moments but the feelings they experienced at the peak moment and at the end of the interaction.

High-impact moments often include:

Delighting an unsatisfied customer with top level customer service. More often than not, servicing an angry or frustrated customer will turn dissatisfaction into an experience that well exceeds his or her expectations and will multiply the LTV manyfold.
Finding the product they are looking for with speed and easy.
Experiencing a moment of surprise and delight.
Involving the senses.

Starbucks began a new effort called the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room which lets customers chat with coffee specialists, watch coffee brew from fresh beans, and try a variety of rare coffees. What we like about Starbucks’ multi-sensory experience: This is a multi-sensory experience that takes customers to the next level. They feel like an active part of the Starbucks journey and are getting an inside look into the company’s product development process. It’s something exciting and unique that further engages customers and gives them a new appreciation for the brand beyond the same coffee every morning.

Recognize and celebrate your loyal customers

Everyone likes to feel appreciated and recognized. Your customers play an essential role in the success of your business, and they want to know that you appreciate them.

A simple “Thank you” goes a long way! Many shops on Amazon and Etsy deliver heartfelt notes of gratitude after every purchase. This is a way to reach across the impersonal eCommerce barrier and remind them that there’s a grateful human on the other side.
In our last webinar, Forrester VP and Principal Analyst shared the amazing example of Chewy.com , the online pet shop. Chewy.com has lifelong customers because they take customer appreciation seriously. They’re known for sending holiday cards, housewarming gifts and even handmade paintings of customers’ pets!
Show what you stand for. Shoppers are looking to connect with society by supporting businesses that campaign for mutual causes. In fact, Google reports that 46% of shoppers say that they make a conscious effort to shop at businesses that align with their values . With this in mind, retailers should take the opportunity to engage their customers with messages that promote a good cause. Because people want to support good causes, they’ll seek out retailers that can fulfill that mission. Be sure to communicate on your website, social media, email, and in-store signage about your commitment to the cause—and pick one that resonates with both you and your target customer

Leverage personalized recommendations based on customer data:

Customer data includes info about each interaction with your brand, shops and products. As you know, not all customers are the same, and some are more valuable to your business than others.

Personalization is a powerful tool for influencing the retail customer journey. According to a study by Accenture, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. Utilize customer data such as browsing history, purchase behavior, and demographics to deliver personalized product recommendations.

The way to understand the value of your current customer base and predict the value of new customers inevitably includes crunching your data. This is not info you can take from industry benchmarks, competitors or companies in your same space.

A customer data infrastructure is mandatory to enable business across multiple departments. By using a CDP with retail-specific use cases you will be able to collect, cleanse, enrich, store and activate data from all online and offline sources and create a single, automated and updated Source of Truth that empower your marketing, product, IT, sales and operations.

As a result of optimizing their data strategy, one of our clients increased 22% the average ticket spend, and another client identified 40% of their customers 3 weeks after launching their loyalty program. Javier Fernández, CTO and co-founder at Loyal Guru

Personalization requires you to segment your customer lists to avoid sending generic spam-like messages, offering irrelevant deals or advertising a product a customer already purchased.

A marketing automation platform can help you easily segment your customers into relevant categories based on demographics, purchase history, interests and other factors.

These segments allow you to follow up with communication and offers that are compelling and relevant.

These would be a couple of practical examples:

Give personalized product recommendations
If a preferred product is out of stock, show similar products
Upsell a more premium version of the product
Cross-sell an accessory related to the product
Show popular items available on your shop now
Send out reminders to regular shoppers.

As and example, Thread sends personalized emails, signed by it’s Lead Stylist, suggestion fashion items that will most certainly appeal to specific clients:

Create a seamless omnichannel experience:

Providing a seamless omnichannel experience is essential for influencing the customer journey. A study by Google found that 85% of online shoppers start a purchase on one device and finish it on another. Ensure consistent branding, messaging, and user experience across all channels to create a cohesive journey. For instance, Starbucks offers a seamless experience by allowing customers to order and pay through their mobile app, pick up their order in-store, and earn loyalty rewards, regardless of the channel they use.

Imagine your client is trying to buy 2 blue shirts on your online store and he gets a message that his selected size is out of stock. At the same time, he is prompted to go to the physical store where he can purchase these items immediately.

That doesn’t make sense in today’s day and age, and it doesn’t make your customer happy!

The concept of omnichannel implies that customers can access your products and services on any platform, device, or channel. So as new channels are introduced, and customers begin using those channels, there’s an expectation that brands integrate accordingly.

Today, technology allows leading retailers to make all product stock available to clients, with no distinction of the channel he is using.

Why is so significant?

Data shows that reducing the number of steps in your customers’ shopping journey increases the average spend. Shifting the orientation toward decision simplicity and helping consumers easily and confidently complete the purchase journey has a profound impact on customer experience, and also in revenue.

Once your business starts to harness the power of data, communication will play a large role in leveraging growth opportunities. Having a Customer Data Platform with a single customer view and integrated marketing features will allow you to reach out to your customers via email, push notifications or SMS to let them know of the promotions that will best convert.

Sephora Beauty Insiders can tap into the Beauty Bag on their phone or desktop and have access to a truckload of data. Consumers can shop, see their favorites list, view past purchases and rewards points, scan items in-store to see other options available online, watch tutorial videos, and locate stores near them.This extremely successful application of omnichannel retail strategy has nurtured 11 million members, who spend 15 times more money on Sephora.com than the average user.

How to start influencing the retail customer journey?

Collect data from all sources

Start by collecting the right data, analyzing that data to determine preferences, taking an omnichannel approach to your data ecosystem and customizing your promotions, discounts and coupons . Sounds like a lot of work? Don’t sweat. Technology helps you get this done with barely any resources from your team.

Make it easy for your customers to weigh options and take decisions.

To help consumers evaluate choices, most brands describe their differentiating features and benefits. Some go a step further, offering buying guides containing side-by-side brand or product comparisons. Reduce the overwhelm of too much information or too many options.

Recognize your customers’ expression of those values in different ways.

Your most loyal customers love your products, but they probably also love what your brand represents. Whether you are pushing forward values like coolness, health, aspiration, luxury, comfort, diversity or others, those are ideas your top customers will connect with.

As an example, you can let your customers support a chosen cause and donate their loyalty points or send his or her unused coupons to their favorite charity. This helps your customers do good and feel good and encourages positive word-of-mouth for your loyalty program.

Top customers are ultra-valuable, so it would make sense that retailers makes every effort to engage customers in meaningful ways, beyond a product-centric transactional relationship.

Still, many retail leaders undercut the value of emotional connection as a lever for customer loyalty. Some see emotion as the opposite of data. They think “data-driven” is always the best approach. But research shows that emotional connection is essential for building relationships.

These days, it’s just not enough to generate affinity, either it is not enough to sell great products, and it is not enough to deliver good customer experience.

Retailers need consistent systems to cultivate long-term customer loyalty. These systems include:

Crafting authentic experiences that make customers feel appreciated by the company (beyond the purchase)
Quantifying customers’ lifetime value and identifying groups of customers who are most profitable
Expanding the relationship beyond the physical store so customers could also engage (and feel appreciated) when they are not there
Training the team consistently so they are on board with the company’s loyalty initiatives.
Analyzing key metrics to track initiatives for continuous long-term improvement

These techniques make a difference. The value of the average customer will shoot up. Customer referral rates will skyrocket. Although loyal customers are a small subset of retailers’ overall customer base, their value vastly exceeds their numbers. Customer engagement is the holy grail of retail profitability.

If you’re a retailer and you’d like to talk about any of the customer engagement strategies outlined in this article in more detail, then get in touch our team – we’ll be happy to show you examples or talk through your brand’s unique challenges.

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Related article, bath & body works loyalty program review.

Customer journey mapping in retail: increasing perceived safety and trust in a supermarket

Customer journey mapping in retail can help take the customer by the hand and together walk through times of perceived high risk. In this article, we look at how the retail sector can use this tool to create customer-centered services, how to create journey maps, and what they look like.

What is customer journey mapping in retail?

What is the value of retail journey maps.

How to create a customer journey map for retail?
Retail example journey map

Key take aways

Customer journey mapping in retail refers to the process of visually illustrating and understanding the various stages, touchpoints, and interactions a customer experiences while engaging with a retail brand. It involves mapping out the entire customer journey, from the initial awareness and consideration stages to the post-purchase and loyalty phases.

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to gain insights into the customer's perspective and identify opportunities for improving the overall retail experience. By creating a visual representation of the customer journey, retailers can analyze and optimize each stage to enhance customer satisfaction, increase engagement, and drive sales. Thus, journey mapping comes with manifold benefits and value for retailers.

Creating a customer journey map can help detect pain points: actual lacks of service, insecurities and the potential for enlightenment of customers. Journey mapping enables the discovery of moments of insecurity and fear, relieves customers and helps them deal with the situation.

The journey map helps to identify moments of high perceived risk and uncovers reasons for dissatisfaction. Through the journey map, actions can be derived: what are problematic areas and moments? And, above all: How to improve the situation?

How to create a retail customer journey map?

The most important steps of journey mapping in retail are:

Identify who the customers are: develop one or more personas to understand what needs and wishes you are confronted with.
Understand the stages of customer behavior: commonly in retail we see the phases of discovery/awareness, purchase, retention and advocacy, however the stages can vary from product to product
Identify the purchase phase: this is the most relevant phase of the journey – what's the ultimate situation in which customers buy
Analyze steps and touchpoint, uncover friction points: what makes the customers leave the store
Add extra details and KPIs, e.g. engagement time, service time

Please consider this as a simple overview and continue on this in-depth guide on how to create a customer journey map for a very detailed instruction.

An example customer journey map for retail: supermarket and grocery

As an example, let's look at supermarkets.

In January 2020, supermarkets were a normal part of our life and rarely someone was afraid of stepping inside. But times changed: after the start of the Covid pandemic, within just a few weeks, supermarkets became a perceived high-risk area and customers were hesitant to visit them.

Supermarkets and governments were collaborating to increase the actual safety as far as they could.

Perceived safety and actual safety can be two quite different things. The same is true for a company that is convinced of its high safety standards, and the customer who depends on their own perception based on evidence.

At this time we understood how crucial feeling safe is, even in the most normal moments of our everyday life.

Therefore, a big part of making customers feel safe again also depends on the organizations themselves. They need to ask themselves: Do the customers know how much the supermarket cares? Do they feel as protected as they can? And above all, do they know where they need to watch out on their own, and when they can just rely on the supermarket measures?

Now check out the example journey map below to get an impression of how journey mapping can help you discover pain points, opportunities, and threats related to a service under specific circumstances like a crisis.

On the journey map you will find the experience of two personas: Paul, an elderly person belonging to the risk group, and Emma, a young girl. They have different needs, habits, and fears when going shopping.

An example journey map of a supermarket experience. Click to expand.

High-level vs zoom-in experiences in retail

Please be aware that this is a high-level journey map. You could zoom into every single step and analyze them in detail.

Let’s take the first step as an example:

How do they get to the supermarket?
Is Paul forced to take public transport, whereas Emma drives her bike?
What's the in-store customer experience? Does it differ from other channels?
How does that influence the entire stress level throughout their shopping experience?

Also, this map is based on the situation in Austria in 2020. Different governments had different policies and take different measures. Journey maps might therefore vary a lot depending on what point of time and in which specific context you’re analyzing.

Customer journey mapping can be used in retail to understand the experience customers have, especially in extraordinary situations like moments of crisis. It also helps to have a detailed look at different groups at customers that have different needs and wishes. Overall, journey mapping in retail is a great tool to increase customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty.

... and now, what's next?

You can have a look at various journey map examples from different industries .

Or directly jump into practice and create your own retail journey map with Smaply – it's free, forever

Paul consults our customers when it comes to using journey mapping tools in their daily work. With his background in business and engineering he knows how to bring technology to a strategic level.

Case study: journey mapping in a global japanese electronics corporation

The why and how of a journey map repository

Create an e-commerce customer journey map with a free tool

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Strategy Guide

Understanding the retail customer journey every step of the way.

There are many things retailers can do to become truly customer-centric. The first step is to make a commitment to consider the customer experience as a priority that drives differentiation and creates competitive advantage.

But what happens next what steps should a business follow to realise that vision every goal worth achieving needs a plan to get there. check out this strategy guide to learn how to transform retail cx using the customer journey as a map to guide you..

Read the Strategy Guide

5 steps to transform your retail experience

When done well, using customer journey maps to guide CX transformation creates new customer value that can lead to sustained competitive advantage. This can take the form of tactical or strategic actions as defined by your strategy. Read this Strategy Guide to:

Learn what drives customer engagement
Understand the current retail customer journey
Generate new ideas to improve the CX journey
Make the right investments
Develop customer-focused capabilities

Understanding the Retail Customer Journey Every Step of the Way example page

Improve customer experiences by understanding the customer journey

Customer journey maps are critical to executing successful customer experience strategy and design. They drive deep understanding of your customers by deconstructing their unique journey into discreet steps that illustrate key moments of truth, delight, and pain with your brand.

TTEC’s CX Journey Mapping and CX transformation solutions provide the canvas for orchestrating the specific capabilities needed to realise the future-state CX vision across people, channels, process and technology.

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Personalizing the customer experience: Driving differentiation in retail

Today’s retail environment is challenging from almost any perspective because of price pressure from discounters, market disruption from online players, and increased price transparency for shoppers. Traditional differentiation approaches in retail—such as a unique selection or strategic pricing and promotions—are not as effective as they once were, as competitors can easily imitate them. But differentiation is still possible through personalized approaches in which retailers create unique experiences tailored to individual customers.

Highly personalized customer experiences, when offered to millions of individual customers by using proprietary data, are difficult for competitors to imitate. When executed well, such experiences enable businesses not only to differentiate themselves but also to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, our research has shown that personalized experiences drive up both customer loyalty and the top line.

Meeting customers’ expectations for a personalized experience

Thanks to online pioneers, such as Amazon, customers have grown to expect and desire personalized experiences: a survey of 1,000 US adults by Epsilon and GBH Insights found that the vast majority of respondents (80 percent) want personalization from retailers. 1 “New Epsilon research indicates 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences,” Epsilon, January 9, 2018, us.epsilon.com. Personalization can even be called a “hygiene factor”: customers take it for granted, but if a retailer gets it wrong, customers may depart for a competitor.

Personalization, once limited mainly to targeted offers, now extends to the entire customer experience. This means that customers want personalization throughout their interactions with a retailer—with multiple, personalized touchpoints that enable them to allocate their time and money according to their preferences. In the best personalized experiences , retailers make the customer part of the dialogue and leverage data to create one-to-one personalization. Customers receive offers that are targeted not just at customers like them, with brands targeting at the segment level with broad-based offers, but at them as individuals , with products, offers, and communications that are uniquely relevant to them.

Understanding how personalization pays off

Given customers’ expectations, retailers must respond to the demand for personalized experiences not only to differentiate themselves but just to survive. When done right, though, personalization allows retailers to do more than merely survive: it enables them to thrive. Personalization at scale (in which companies have personal interactions with all or a large segment of their customers) often delivers a 1 to 2 percent lift in total sales for grocery companies and an even higher lift for other retailers, typically by driving up loyalty and share-of-wallet among already-loyal customers (for whom data are more abundant and response rates are higher). These programs can also reduce marketing and sales costs by around 10 to 20 percent.

Not only that, successful personalization programs yield more engaged customers and drive up the top line. In general, a positive customer experience is hugely meaningful to a retailer’s success: it yields 20 percent higher customer-satisfaction rates, a 10 to 15 percent boost in sales-conversion rates, and an increase in employee engagement of 20 to 30 percent. Customer-experience leaders in the retail space (retailers with consistently high customer-satisfaction scores) have provided their shareholders with returns that are three times higher than the returns generated by retailers with low customer-satisfaction scores.

To maximize the results of a personalization program, we recommend focusing initially on the most loyal customers, as programs targeting regular shoppers yield a return on investment three times higher than that of mass promotions. Moreover, building data on the most loyal customers sets off a virtuous cycle by generating ever-more-relevant data and higher response rates that further boost data quality.

Would you like to learn more about our Retail Practice ?

Learning from success stories.

Retailers across many different categories have managed to implement personalization at scale effectively and have significant success to show for the effort. Of course, Amazon has been a pioneer in this field, but other companies—including grocery companies, which make up for what they lack in e-commerce data with loyalty data from their physical stores—have moved into the top tier in recent years with successful personalization programs of their own.

Personalization pioneer: Amazon

As the ruler of large, pure-play, online retailers, Amazon has used sophisticated analytics to shape its personalization efforts. Over time, Amazon has expanded its personalization program to show customers products that are often purchased with the item they are viewing, display items that can be bundled with products in a customer’s cart, and recommend additional products in the e-mails it sends to confirm transactions.

Amazon continues to raise the personalization bar with ever-more-granular, -innovative offerings to individual customers. For example, Amazon Prime Wardrobe has recently launched a personal shopping service exclusively for Prime members. Customers complete a survey about their styles and fit preferences, and a team of stylists provides personalized recommendations from more than half a million items across brands. Amazon will probably continue to lead innovation in personalization, but other, smaller retailers—with far less sophisticated systems—are setting new standards, too.

Dynamic personalization: European grocer

A large European grocery company has successfully moved from one-size-fits-all marketing to personalized experiences. This shift began with research based on the retailer’s macrosegmentation; the retailer was then able to drill down a level further to create smaller segments based on location, time of day, and other specifics. From there, the grocer built a new transaction engine so it could institute business rules. For example, the engine does not offer discounts to regular shoppers who buy coffee or lunch at the store every day. Instead, it routes discounts toward other segments and users of the grocer’s smartphone app, who receive offers as they pass by the store.

The rich data from this grocer’s transaction engine, personalization engine, mobile app, and other tools have allowed the company to track sales across its entire network of locations—enabling the grocer to optimize for weather, day of the week, time of day, and similar data points that greatly enhance the effectiveness of promotions.

Omnichannel experience: Sephora

Sephora, an international beauty-products retailer, offers personalized experiences that are truly omnichannel in their presentation to consumers. The company’s digital channels—particularly its mobile app—encourage customers to book in-store makeovers and fashion consultations. The app’s “in-store companion” feature enables users to find a store, check to see if an item is in stock, and book a reservation. When customers choose to have their makeup done in stores, they receive a log-in for the app so that the makeup artist can input each product she or he used into the customer’s personal profile. The app also allows customers to virtually try on products and to receive recommendations based on their personal beauty traits. When customers visit a Sephora store, they can use the app to find the products they have virtually sampled.

All of Sephora’s customer communications—no matter the platform—display the customer’s loyalty points. Sales associates can see these point totals, too, and can access a customer’s profile in store. The profile includes data on the customer’s in-store purchases, online browsing and purchasing patterns, and interactions with in-store salespeople.

Sephora’s program is notable for another reason, too: it clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of focusing on the most loyal customers. The company’s tiered loyalty program, Beauty Insider, offers its highest-level members early access to new products, invitations to exclusive events, free custom beauty services, and more. All members receive customized recommendations based on profiles they fill out online. Their profile details—such as first name, buying habits, and quiz responses—are deployed across channels. Store associates can access a customer’s profile in the store and track items that were sampled, making it easy for customers to find and buy those items on the website or app. Every communication from the brand, on every platform, displays the customer’s loyalty points, and offers are synchronized across platforms.

The results of Sephora’s personalization efforts have been striking. The loyalty program now has around 25 million members. In 2018, members accounted for 80 percent of Sephora’s total transactions. 2 Pamela N. Danziger, “How to make a great loyalty program even better? Sephora has the answer,” Forbes , January 23, 2020, forbes.com; James Stewart, “Sephora gets 80% of its sales from this,” Ragtrader , November 6, 2018, ragtrader.com.au. And for the third year in a row, with a score of 79 out of a possible 100, Sephora has claimed the top slot in Sailthru’s Retail Personalization Index. 3 “The 3rd annual Retail Personalization Index,” Sailthru, September 17, 2019, sailthru.com.

In-store personalization: Nike

Not to be outdone in the personalization game is Nike, one of the largest athletic-footwear and athleisure companies in the world. Nike has taken personalization all the way to the individual product by allowing customers to configure their own clothes and shoes. The company recently launched a 3-D sneaker-customization platform that allows shoppers to generate real-time, shareable snapshots of finished footwear.

Personalization extends to Nike’s physical locations, too. Nike’s flagship store in New York City offers a compelling omnichannel shopping experience driven by membership in NikePlus, the company’s personalized loyalty program. Members receive personalized, exclusive benefits, such as access to Nike Speed Shop, which offers a data-driven, locally tailored assortment of “NYC favorites.” Members can also reserve items to be stored in pickup lockers and retrieve them by scanning their NikePlus member pass. With Nike Shop the Look, members can use QR-code-scanning to determine the availability of their preferred sizes and colors and to request delivery to their selected pickup location or dressing room. Using Instant Checkout, members can skip the cash-register line and check out directly from their own stored-payment device. Other benefits include access to Nike Expert Studio, where members can book personal, one-on-one appointments with Nike experts, and the opportunity to book appointments with Nike by You, where members can view a selection of silhouettes that are uniquely fitted to their specifications.

The necessary changes require a significant shift in the mindsets of employees so that they become comfortable with the experiments personalization requires.

Identifying common challenges for retailers

Given the success stories, it is little surprise that, in a Periscope by McKinsey survey of retailers attending World Retail Congress 2017, 95 percent of retail CEOs say personalizing the customer experience is a strategic priority for their companies. But that same survey showed that only 23 percent of consumers believe that retailers are doing a good job in their personalization efforts. What is behind this disparity?

First of all, most retailers are still in the early stages of their personalization efforts. Our research indicates that only 15 percent of retailers have fully implemented personalization strategies. More than 80 percent are still defining a personalization strategy or have begun pilot initiatives. The remaining retailers have decided to deprioritize personalization for now, for various reasons.

Retailers seem to be facing four main tactical challenges in getting personalization off the ground:

Data management. More than two-thirds of survey respondents (67 percent) indicate that their greatest personalization challenge is the gathering, integration, and synthesis of customer data.
Data analytics. Acquiring and maintaining in-house expertise in analytics and data science are proving to be major concerns for 48 percent of surveyed retailers.
Alignment of retail organizations across functions. For many retailers, siloed processes and organizational models prevent the efficient and prompt sharing of customer data and promotion decisions (for example, difficulty in aligning the marketing and merchandizing teams). Of the survey group, 43 percent say these silos “make life difficult,” and 25 percent report that such silos make it difficult to get vendor funding—as well as buy-in—from suppliers for personalized offerings (especially in the grocery category). In many cases, these sorts of changes require a significant shift in the mindsets of employees so that they become comfortable with the test-and-learn and fast-fail experiments that personalization requires.
Tools and technology enablement. Of the survey participants, 67 percent admit that they did not have the correct tools in place to execute personalization at scale. An additional 41 percent say finding the right solution partner was a struggle.

These challenges are further complicated by the fact that many retailers still operate under a hybrid, “bricks and clicks” strategy, making it even more difficult to implement the right levels of personalization in stores and online. Retailers with an omnichannel setup, however, have their own challenges, particularly in structuring offers and executing across communication touchpoints.

Overcoming the obstacles

All is not lost, however. As our previous case examples show, retailers across the spectrum have managed to create truly personalized experiences for both the online world and brick-and-mortar channels. The results for both the affected customers and the financial results are impressive. So how do these retailers do this?

There is no single winning recipe, as the breadth of our case examples shows. In our experience, though, an effective personalization operating model has four prongs: a data foundation, decisioning, design, and distribution (exhibit). Within this model are eight core elements.

First, all of these retailers have started small. They begin by testing and learning while building the necessary capabilities and multidimensional intelligence on customers over time. Data management is crucial here: getting the right data is much more important than gathering every last scrap of data. The customer database needs to be multidimensional, but it does not have to provide a 360-degree view of customers. Successful retailers start by gathering the most important data before scaling up to a broader understanding of each individual customer.

A detailed customer segmentation and analysis is the next common element. With the right data management and analytics in place, retailers can identify customers’ value triggers and then score and rank customers to facilitate effective targeting and personalization.

Developing a playbook of responses to certain triggers—such as abandoning a shopping cart and browsing of items that belong to a larger collection—is the third element. The goal here is to build a library of offers, with a few hundred as a good starting point. Some companies eventually build a large library of content that they can put together into a personalized magazine for customers. The right mix of triggers results in open and click-through rates that outperform those of traditional mass marketing.

The fourth element is a robust decisioning engine (campaign coordination) that plans experiences across multiple channels and reduces the risk of sending conflicting messages. It also allows retailers to drive the value created by each touchpoint and to maximize that value across the multichannel lineup.

An agile cross-functional team is the fifth element. A team room should be staffed by a cross-functional team—the engineers, merchandising professionals, and marketing experts should all be in one room. The team’s work should include weekly deployments implemented with a test-and-learn spirit more commonly found in the internet software betas of Google and other web giants. The goal of this cross-functional room is to break down organizational silos and to have mixed teams working together to increase pace and quality.

The sixth element of a successful personalization effort is securing the right talents, capabilities, and culture to staff the team. The leadership needs to set the right example at the outset, but from there, the program will touch everyone from the HR team to the marketing and merchandising staffs. The right mix of data scientists and marketing-technology experts is also necessary.

The end of shopping’s boundaries: Omnichannel personalization

The right technology enablement can be complex to implement, but it forms the core—and the seventh element—of a successful personalization effort. Getting the various systems to work together and pull in the same direction can form the commercial heart of an organization. Most retailers are not maximizing the value that their existing technology platforms can offer, so unifying the systems will squeeze more value from them along the way. Building a more flexible platform on top of legacy systems is often beneficial, too.

Finally, retailers should undertake this effort with a test-and-learn approach . There is no need to build a vast, multivariable database as the first step. As the exhibit notes, do not wait for perfection. Instead, start small. Pick a straightforward experience that will generate a positive impact and start with that. Test the efficacy of that idea, generate useful metrics, and then expand to a second idea. Repeat. As the resulting impact is quantified, and the insights generated by experiments are funneled back to the team, the loop will be closed on the analytics powering each deployment.

In some retail sectors (the grocery sector, for example), collaboration with suppliers is important. The goal here is to build a mutually beneficial partnership with the supplier. To do so, shift funding from mass promotions to personalized experiences and give vendors full transparency into how their products perform. Additionally, provide each vendor with a point person who manages its relationship with the retail network. This person will quickly become a strategic partner who helps better align the retailer and supplier.

All eight elements humming in unison will form an effective personalized-experience engine that differentiates the retailer, increases share of wallet among the most loyal customers, and ultimately boosts the retailer’s top and bottom lines.

Getting started

Given the potential impact of personalization, it makes sense that retailers would be eager to begin their personalization efforts. But how can they do that thoughtfully?

The first step is to define a short list of high-impact use cases that are relevant to the consumer but not too complex to execute against. A skilled cross-functional team can then be assembled to construct an integrated database for those use cases. The team should make sure that the data are both highly available and targeted while also considering the needs of future programs (including high-impact use cases). This database does not need to be perfect. Rather, it should be built through iteration, testing, and learning.

To begin building a personalization program—and to fuel its effective execution—retailers should create a cross-functional team to test and learn from experiments. Analytics and technology professionals will be critical to the program, especially when scaling it up. Finding the right external partner to help develop the personalization program is important, too, and will help accelerate the retailer’s progress toward results: a more personalized experience, greater customer loyalty, marked differentiation, increased wallet share, and substantially better top and bottom lines.

Erik Lindecrantz is a partner in McKinsey’s Tokyo office, Madeleine Tjon Pian Gi is a partner in the Amsterdam office, and Stefano Zerbi is a senior partner in the Milan office.

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Open access
Published: 12 September 2023

Retail technologies that enhance the customer experience: a practitioner-centred approach

Myriam Quinones ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8906-948X 1 ,
Ana M. Díaz-Martín 1 &
Mónica Gómez-Suárez ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7415-3964 1

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 10 , Article number: 564 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Business and management

Technology has helped consumers embrace new ways of shopping. This article aims to explore how retailers capitalise on technology to create a differentiated customer experience (CX). The study provides a list of 15 shopper-facing technologies that retailers assess when aiming to improve CX and develops a framework to classify them. To do so, an exploratory study is conducted based on a qualitative enquiry and a survey of 201 retail experts. Data are analysed using content, descriptive, and correspondence analyses. The results spell out three groups of technological solutions that retailers should consider when aiming to create an enhanced CX: (1) technologies that contribute to improving experiential aspects of the shopping experience, (2) technologies that reduce friction throughout the customer journey and (2) technologies that enhance transparency and brand trust. The findings of this study offer key insights to retail companies who face the challenge of investing in technological advancements that deliver superior value to customers while supporting their firm’s long-term economic goals.

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Predicting and improving complex beer flavor through machine learning

Michiel Schreurs, Supinya Piampongsant, … Kevin J. Verstrepen

Introduction

With consumers increasingly demanding a seamless shopping experience, the delivery of a superior customer experience (CX) has become a key objective for retail companies, many of which have incorporated this notion into their business mission statements (Foroudi et al., 2018 ). Aiming to produce marketing-relevant insights, this study responds to the call to conduct descriptive research as a starting point to identify the CX management strategies currently in use in retail (Verhoef et al., 2009 ).

Conveniently integrated into the customer journey, technology has the potential to enhance CX (Sebald and Jacob, 2020 ; Alexander and Kent, 2020 ), which includes all the touchpoints at which the customer interacts with the business, product, or service (Grewal et al., 2009 ), and ultimately drives satisfaction, purchase intentions, and store patronage (Puccinelli et al., 2009 ; Mosquera et al., 2018 ; Molinillo et al. 2020 ). In that vein, firms that succeed at using technology to improve the shopping experience are most likely to enjoy a stronger competitive advantage (Savastano et al., 2019 ; Reinartz et al., 2019 ; Foroudi et al., 2018 ; Sethuraman and Parasuraman, 2005 ).

In today’s highly competitive retail environment, retailers require information on how they can strategically incorporate technology to maximise the experience they can provide to customers and the performance of their firms (Grewal et al., 2020 ; Moore et al., 2022 ). However, research on the role of technology as an enabler of CX remains scarce (Flavián et al. 2020 ; Tom Dieck and Han, 2022 ; Alexander and Kent, 2020 ). Consequently, the main objective of this research is to explore how retailers leverage technology to create a differentiated CX.

Only a small number of previous studies offer an inventory of retailing technologies into a common framework, with even fewer adopting the retailer perspective (e.g., Hoyer et al., 2020 ; Linzbach et al., 2019 ; Reinartz et al. 2019 ; Pantano and Vannucci, 2019 ; Sethuraman and Parasuraman, 2005 ). This practice-informed article contributes to the existing literature by proposing a new framework to classify key retail technologies based on their potential to sustain CX management strategies. Specifically, this study provides a list of 15 customer-facing technologies and classifies them based on three paths that retailers follow to improve CX: (1) improving the hedonic aspects of the shopping experience, (2) reducing pain points from the customer journey, and/or (3) enhancing customers’ brand trust. In doing so, the study aims to help retailers evaluate the technology investments that best fit their CX differentiation goals.

The theoretical foundation of this research draws from the conceptualisation of CX developed by Verhoef et al. ( 2009 ) and the classification of competitive retail strategies developed by Kahn ( 2018 ). Our mixed-method research comprises qualitative and quantitative studies that involve obtaining data from retail executives. Following several in-depth interviews and focus groups with retail managers, we collected survey data from a sample of 201 retail and technology practitioners. Resulting from the analysis of their input, the findings of this exploratory study offer valuable information to academia and practitioners on how retail firms can capitalise on technology to drive brand trust, make shopping a fun experience, or remove friction from the purchasing process. To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first in the field of marketing which associates a comprehensive set of technologies with retail strategies directly addressed to boost CX.

The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on customer experience, the integration of technology in the customer journey and the role of technology on retailers’ CX strategy. This section also provides a proposal for a new categorisation of retail technologies. Methods section focuses on the research methodology, while the Results section presents the results of the empirical analyses. The study’s key findings, research limitations and future research paths are discussed in the Discussion section.

Theoretical framework

Retail technologies and cx.

As technology reshapes existing relationships between consumers and retailers, the latter strive to integrate and manage channels to offer a connected and personalised experience to their clients (Shankar et al., 2021 ; Ratchford et al., 2022 , Hsia et al., 2020 ). These customer-retailer interactions, many of which are digital, establish the foundations of CX (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020 ; Alexander and Kent, 2022 ).

With an ever-increasing number of contact points adding complexity to the customer journey, CX has received growing attention from marketing academics and managers for the last two decades (Bolton et al., 2018 : Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; De Keyser et al., 2015 , 2020 ; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2015 ). Table S1 of the supplementary information file provides a brief overview of the definitions of CX.

Verhoef et al. ( 2009 p.32) define CX as “a holistic construct and involves the customer’s cognitive, affective, emotional, social, and physical responses to the retailer. This experience is created not only by those elements that the retailer can control (e.g. service interface, retail atmosphere, assortment, price) but also by elements that are outside of the retailer’s control (e.g. the influence of others, purpose of shopping)”. Based on extant research that identifies macro-factors and firm-controlled factors that influence the cognitive and affective responses that define CX (Grewal et al., 2009 : Verhoef et al., 2009 ), the idea that underpins this study is that customer-facing technological solutions have the potential to shape CX because technology affects how customers sense, think, act, and relate to retailers and their brands.

It is generally accepted that the consumer experience is created through a customer journey, which includes three stages: prepurchase, purchase, and postpurchase (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ). Recent literature describes the proliferation of retail technologies and how they fit into each phase of the customer journey (Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020 ; Hoffman et al., 2022 ; Shankar et al., 2021 ).

During the search and consideration phase that defines the prepurchase process, advanced retail technologies linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) provide companies with real-time transactional as well as behavioural data that enable better-informed customer recommendations (Verhoef et al., 2009 ). The content of personalized messages and alerts may be related to price changes, new products, availability of out-of-stock products, promotions, reminders about the status of the online store basket or wish lists (Willems et al., 2017 ; Hofacker et al., 2016 ; Linzbach et al., 2019 ). Similarly, technologies that provide immersive experiences (augmented, virtual and mixed reality) allow shoppers to know and experience products and services during the awareness and consideration stages of the consumer journey, with a high degree of realism and in a playful way (Farah et al., 2019 ).

In the purchase stage, electronic tags that provide product, price, and promotional information contribute to generating more confidence and better shopping experiences (Valdés and Franco, 2020 ). Self-checkout systems and new forms of payment through mobile phones or facial recognition are technological solutions that streamline the purchasing process for consumers, enhancing their CX. Click&collect methods and smart lockers, which allow consumers to conveniently pick up products that they purchased online, also contribute to the objective of removing pain points from the shopping experience (Reinartz et al., 2019 ).

In addition, there is a growing number of technologies with high potential to enhance the postpurchase stage of the customer journey. For example, conversational platforms that range from virtual personal assistants to chatbots are used not only to assist shoppers during the early phases of the customer journey through voice or online messaging but also to stay connected after the purchase has been completed (Rzepka et al., 2020 ). Likewise, prior studies show that customer interactions with VR/AR can facilitate loyalty and advocacy (Kliestik et al., 2022 ; Farah et al., 2019 ).

In summary, as Roggeveen and Sethuraman ( 2020 p. 300) indicate, “understanding the customer journey cannot be complete without taking into account how different retail technologies direct the journey”. However, understanding the role of retail technologies in the provision of superior CX remains underplayed in the extant literature, therefore, warranting further attention.

Companies that identify which technologies best enhance the shopper experience stand a better chance of being successful (Grewal et al., 2021 ). Since no previous studies have evaluated retail technologies as enabling factors for a superior CX, this article aims to advance previous research by proposing a framework that organises technologies according to the retail CX strategy they mostly support.

Based on Kahn´s ( 2018 ) Retail´s Success Matrix and Gauri et al. ( 2021 ) customer-centric conceptual framework for the success of retail formats, we propose three groups of front-end retail technologies that firms can leverage to enhance CX:

Technology that improves the experiential aspect of shopping and makes the act of shopping a fun and exciting activity. For instance, technologies such as AR/VR/MR have been found to enrich the purchase experience because they offer unique opportunities for consumers to explore new shopping environments. Whether through glasses or mobile applications, users interact with objects and situations, both in the real and digital world, changing the way they engage in shopping (Bonetti et al., 2019 ; Beck and Crié, 2018 ) and creating meaningful experiences which lead to higher in-store traffic (Flavián et al., 2020 ; Hsia et al., 2020 : Mosquera et al., 2018 ; Farah et al., 2019 ; Pantano and Viassone, 2015 ).

Technology that contributes to a frictionless shopping experience by saving money, time, and effort that customers devote to shopping (Grewal et al., 2020 ; Reintzart et al., 2019 ; Inman and Nikolova, 2017 ), such as price comparison apps or in-store, self-service technology (Moorhouse et al., 2018 ).

Technology that helps increase customer trust. Customer trust has been defined as the “overall belief that the retailer will take actions that result in positive outcomes for the shopper” (Inman and Nikolova, 2017 p. 16). For example, retail solutions powered by blockchain technology allow customers to track a product back to its source, which might increase shoppers’ confidence in the product/brand.

It is important to mention that there are also back-office technological solutions available to retailers that have the potential to improve operational efficiency (Reinartz et al., 2019 ; Sethuraman and Parasuraman, 2005 ). However, as previously stated, the emphasis of this study is on the customer-facing technologies that may influence CX. Thus, aiming to explore the range of front-end technologies that retailers evaluate as enablers of an enhanced CX, we develop the following research questions:

RQ1: According to retailers, what technological solutions have the greatest potential to influence CX?

RQ2: According to retailers, what lever of CX does each technology primarily support?

The next section describes the research methods employed to reveal the answers to these questions.

The study was structured in two phases: (1) a qualitative stage and (2) a survey to retail managers through personal and online questionnaires. The qualitative stage comprises in-depth interviews, group meetings, and expert opinions while the quantitative stage is based on personal and online surveys.

In the qualitative phase, the authors conducted three in-depth interviews with key informants. The executives consulted held senior management positions and were experts in their respective sectors (mass consumer goods, apparel, and furniture). After the in-depth interviews, three group meetings were held with managers of leading retail companies. Between six and eight informants participated in each meeting. Participants were experts in the fields of digital transformation, information technologies, and/or strategic marketing.

Based on the results of the qualitative study and the bibliographic review, a questionnaire was designed as the basis for the quantitative work. Then, a pre-test with 10 retail experts was run to establish the final list of technologies and assess their validity. The items of the questionnaire that were unclear, not representative of the domain, or open to misinterpretation were eliminated or reworded. In addition, redundant or unnecessary items were eliminated. The resulting questionnaire had a first block of questions related to the classification variables (company role in the distribution channel, industry, company size and practitioner’s job title). A second block included a table with the list of technologies and the request to assign each technology to the CX strategy it had the greatest impact on. The questionnaire may be found in the supplementary information file .

The main survey was conducted using Qualtrics. Participants were presented with a list of retail technologies and were subsequently asked to associate each technology with the CX strategy they believed the technology contributed the most. Participants responded through a personal interview (60%) and a self-administered online questionnaire (40%).

To gather the sample, the authors collaborated with an agency that regularly organises national retail events that bring together important Spanish industry players. It is important to mention that the retail sector plays a crucial role in Spain’s economy, holding a prominent position in terms of its contribution to economic activity, employment generation, and the number of enterprises (Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, 2022 ). This industry has a strong presence throughout the country, acting as a cohesive force within the economy from both social and territorial perspectives (Caixabank Research, 2021 ).

The sample was composed of three profiles: retail managers (55%), executives of mass consumer goods manufacturers (20%) and retail technology service providers (25%). The respondents worked in the following business areas: marketing (23%), commercial or business development (18%), digital transformation and technology (11%) and logistics (6.5%). 11% of them were CEO or company owners. Regarding the companies’ profiles, their activity sectors were apparel (16%), food (15.5%), furniture (10%) and cosmetics (3%). Most of the sample (80%) were companies with 500+ employees.

After the depuration of the initial 201 responses, we retained 168 valid surveys. To analyse the data, we applied descriptive methods and Multiple Correspondence Factor Analysis (MCA) using SPSS 26.0.

MCA was chosen for its flexibility regarding the conditions required to graphically represent the relationships between CX strategies and technological solutions. In this sense, MCA has some advantages over other mapping techniques such as metric or nonmetric multidimensional analysis (MDS). Its implementation and analysis are much simpler than those of the MDS, based upon a series of cards that must be prepared with the objective that the respondents order or value them by preference. Thus, when applying MDS techniques, only a few objects can be introduced so as not to increase the respondents’ cognitive load. On the contrary, in the case of the MCA, researchers only have to introduce the table in the questionnaire with rows and columns and the respondents must mark an answer if they consider there is an association between the two. In addition, the interpretation of the positions of the objects with MCA is not subjective as it is based on the quadrants and the objects’ (rows and columns) positions.

Technology-retail strategy spontaneous association

The qualitative stage served to identify which technological solutions were deployed by key retailers who are looking to offer an excellent customer experience. The analyses based on word clouds and discourse assessments allowed us to nominate a list of 15 retail technologies. In addition, the qualitative study confirmed that retailers who capitalise on technology to excel in CX identified the three strategies that we hypothesised about in the theoretical section: (1) improving the hedonic aspects of the shopping experience by enabling a fun and unique shopping trip, (2) reducing pain points to ensure a convenient and frictionless shopping journey, and (3) enhancing brand trust.

Table 1 shows the contingency table resulting from the survey. It shows participants’ spontaneous associations between technologies (rows) and strategies (columns). Some technologies may serve more than one strategic purpose if they encompass the benefits of more than one aspect of CX. For example, voice and image search solutions are strongly associated with both experimental shopping and frictionless shopping because different companies use this technology in ways that vary depending on the source of their competitive advantage.

Our findings show that 80% of the retail experts who participated in the study identified AR/VR/MR as technologies that add excitement to the shopping customer journey. According to 84% of the participants, 3D printing technology also facilitates the delivery of a differentiated and more pleasant shopping experience. In addition, 52% of the participants made a spontaneous association between voice and image search and experiential shopping, identifying these technologies as enablers of a fun shopping experience, while 43% of them thought that these solutions contributed to reducing customers’ pain points.

When presented with the list of technologies, retail experts marked mobile payments (83%), click&collect (73%), facial recognition (67%), geolocalization (60%), chatbots (59%) and voice assistants (58%) as technologies that retailers primarily invest in aiming to eliminate pain points and deliver a frictionless shopping experience. Finally, blockchain (52%) and high-tech flagship stores (48%) compose the cluster of technological solutions that support brand trust and transparency strategies.

Map of technology and CX strategies

By applying MCA to the absolute frequencies from the crossing of each solution with each strategy, we obtain a two-axis model that proved to be significant (Chi-square = 693.05; df = 28; Sign. = 0.000), accounting for 85% of the inertia (axis 1 = 67.2%; axis 2 = 32.8%). Tables 2 and 3 show the contribution of rows and columns to inertia.

The map that plots the position of the 15 technologies concerning the identified CX strategies is depicted in Fig. 1 .

Positioning Map.

Responding to calls to conduct research that sheds light on retailing CX management strategies, this study adopts the distributor perspective in identifying key technological solutions that are being deployed to enhance CX in the retail industry and provide a conceptual framework to classify them.

Specifically, the study outlines three paths for retailers to harness technology to deliver a superior CX. The first path is to deploy technology to enhance the hedonic aspect of shopping by making interactions personal and memorable for shoppers. The second route is to leverage technology that eliminates painful touchpoints on the shopping journey, thus offering a frictionless shopping experience. The third axis is to invest in technology that contributes to a transparent and trustworthy shopping experience that helps build brand trust.

Regarding the first path, the study’s results show that retail experts identify AR/VR/MR, and 3D printing as technologies that are enabling shoppers to interact with different touch points in innovative ways. AR/VR/MR increase the hedonic and experiential components of a shopping trip because they allow customers to virtually try on products or view how a product would look in their home before making their purchase. These technologies also help display virtual endless shelves with a curated selection of products based on customer preferences or past purchase history. Similarly, practitioners report that 3D printing technology facilitates the delivery of unique shopping experiences because it allows small-scale, on-demand manufacturing of products designed according to customer needs.

Based on the study’s findings, retailers think of voice assistants, chatbots, automated checkouts and mobile and facial recognition payment systems as key technologies that should be leveraged to remove obstacles from the shopping journey. This is the second route to enhance CX identified in this study. Voice assistants and chatbots minimize friction by improving store and web navigation, making finding and purchasing a product easier and faster. Likewise, click&collect services offer additional convenience to omnichannel shoppers. The results also suggest that in-store shopping can be enhanced by empowering front-line employees with mobile devices to access real-time inventory and process transactions anywhere in the store. Similarly, self-checkouts and contactless and/or mobile payment methods offer the ability to eliminate pain points from the shopping journey by significantly reducing queuing times. Finally, the ubiquity of mobile devices supports distributors’ decisions to increasingly invest in geo-marketing initiatives. With Bluetooth, GPS systems, or Wi-Fi/ultrasound beacons installed to identify the location of customers connected through their mobile apps, retailers can issue personalized and contextualized push notifications, such as promotional offers and meaningful product recommendations based on the consumer’s profile and mobility pattern (Bourg et al., 2021 ), which aid in completing the purchase as well as enable follow-up services and loyalty programs.

Regarding the third path, participants in our study pointed out that blockchain’s immutable distributed ledger technology has the potential to improve collaboration between different supply chain agents, allowing retailers not only to ensure that products are available in the right place at the right time but also to provide shoppers with unprecedently transparent product information. With buyers heavily relying on brands and sellers that they trust (Nghiêm-Phú, 2022 ; Nim et al., 2022 ), high-tech flagship stores may also contribute to signalling that the retailer is competent and helpful, qualities that are associated with higher trust (Inman and Nikolova, 2017 ; Mosquera et al., 2018 ).

Theoretical implications

This paper aims to expand academic research on the role of technology in retailers’ CX management strategies. Consequently, it offers several theoretical contributions.

First, studies that provide an up-to-date overview of retailing technologies are scarce. To address this gap, this article depicts 15 customer-facing technological solutions that are currently deployed in the retail industry according to the literature and input from retail experts in practice. Moreover, the retail executives who participated in the study corroborate the key idea that underpins this research work. That is, the integration of technology into the customer journey has the potential to enhance CX (Sebald and Jacob, 2020 ; Alexander and Kent, 2022 ).

Second, this article offers a clear theoretical contribution by proposing a new conceptual framework to categorise front-end retail technologies. We offer a map of existing technological solutions where technologies are placed per their positions relative to three levers of CX: fun and unique shopping experience, easy or frictionless purchase process and brand trust. Researchers considering studying retail technology could use this framework and expand our analysis by incorporating new technological solutions. Furthermore, concurrent with the existing literature (Hoffman et al., 2022 ), our findings show that technology can serve multiple purposes at the same time, although maybe to different degrees.

Finally, since the study takes the perspective of retailers, it provides theoretical insights that could have been neglected in studies based on the more broadly adopted customer viewpoint. Moreover, whilst most previous retailer-oriented research uses secondary data sources, by soliciting information from retail practitioners, this study offers a deeper understanding of their perception of technology as a core component of their CX management strategies.

Managerial implications

Given that consumers are and will be loyal to retailers that provide exceptional value through great experiences (Moore et al., 2022 ; Kahn, 2021 ), this study could help retail firms gain a better understanding of how to integrate technology into the customer journey to serve as a point of differentiation in the competitive retail sector.

With a wide selection of technologies available on the market, it might be difficult for retailers to choose the most appropriate solutions, especially if implementation costs are high. Our map, which plots the position of 15 technologies according to three different paths that might be followed to enhance CX, offers retailers an additional tool to evaluate emerging technologies. Retailers should select the area where their service offer can stand out compared to their competitors and then choose the technological solutions that help them deliver their value proposition in the best fashion. For instance, Nike, Ikea, Gap, and Sephora were pioneers in using augmented reality to improve the way their customers engaged in shopping for their brands. Other retailers decide to prioritise investing in flagship stores to build greater customer trust or to enhance CX by supplementing the efforts of frontline employees through the integration of self-service technologies such as self-checkouts or click&collect services.

Limitations and future research lines

Future research could address the limitations of this exploratory study. First, as a non-random sampling method was followed, new studies could replicate our work using a probabilistic sampling method and compare the results. Second, given that the research focus was on customer-facing technologies, several back-end retail technologies were not included in the study. Further research could incorporate technologies aimed at increasing operational efficiency. Third, despite its significance, the retail sector in Spain consists mainly of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-SMEs, making it a labour-intensive sector where the adoption of key digital capabilities, including Customer Relationship Management, big data, cloud computing, IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and employment of IT specialists are relatively lower than its European counterparts (Spanish Digital Economy Association, 2023 ). New studies are required to provide conclusive cross-country studies, which could compare not only the role of technology as an enabler of CX in different countries but also test if there are statistically significant differences in parameters pertaining to geographical, economic and/or cultural contexts.

Deepening the understanding of the perceptual gap that might exist between consumers and retail managers could be another fruitful line of research. As Moore et al. ( 2022 ) suggest, “what contributes towards a positive retail CX for one consumer might be the very thing that leads to a bad experience for another shopper. Choice rather than imposed technology is the key to success” (p.7). Likewise, an interesting new research avenue would be to explore the barriers that technology poses to certain customer segments (e.g., ageism or technostress (Kumar et al. 2022 )). Finally, adding technologies to the retail experience has been found to alter the way customers interact with frontline employees (Grewal et al. 2020 ). Therefore, additional studies could explore the impact of retail technology on CX adopting the lens of in-store associates.

In summary, whilst the insights provided by this study contribute to the retail literature by shedding light on how customer-facing technologies enhance retailers’ CX, future studies are needed to address the new research paths identified in this article.

Data availability

The data presented in this study are not publicly available due to confidentiality restrictions. They could be made available on reasonable request from the corresponding author with the prior permission of the companies involved.

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Acknowledgements

This study was conducted under the framework of the research group TECHNOCONS ‘Consumer Behaviour and Technology’, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). This study benefited from the Professorship Excellence Program in accordance with the multi-year agreement signed by the Government of Madrid and the Autonomous University of Madrid (Line #3). This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant PID2020-113561RB-I00. The fieldwork was supported by funding under grant FUAM -135700.

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Myriam Quinones, Ana M. Díaz-Martín & Mónica Gómez-Suárez

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Conception of the study, conceptualization and data acquisition: MQ and AMD-M. Formal data analysis: MG-S. Writing-original draft preparation: MQ and MG-S. Writing—review and editing: MQ, MG-S and AMD-M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Myriam Quinones .

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All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and followed the protocol issued by the Ethics Committee of Research (Comité de Ética de la Investigación) approved by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain).

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Quinones, M., Díaz-Martín, A.M. & Gómez-Suárez, M. Retail technologies that enhance the customer experience: a practitioner-centred approach. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 564 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02023-z

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Received : 15 March 2023

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Published : 12 September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02023-z

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Mapping the Retail Customer Journey: How to Get Started
Create a customer journey map. Or, as the case may be, multiple maps serve different buyer personas. Visualize the journey. Once a retailer has mapped the journey, they need to undergo it themselves. This step is vital, as it provides brands with a firsthand perspective on which touchpoints require additional support.
What Is the Retail Customer Journey? (With Phases and Tips)
Creating a customer journey allows a business to map the customer's experience, which can help identify key selling points and create an effective sales funnel. You can use the following steps to create a retail customer journey: 1. Identify your customers. When developing a retail customer journey, you must first identify your customers.
Retail Customer Journey: Essential Stages and Strategies
The retail customer journey is a comprehensive overview of consumer behavior and interaction with a brand or product. It encapsulates every step from the initial discovery to the final purchase decision and even post-purchase interactions. This journey is not just a path to a transaction, but an insight into the customer experience with a brand.
Unraveling the Retail Customer Journey: A Comprehensive Guide to
Customers navigate various stages when interacting with a retail store. Understanding these distinct phases is key to improving their shopping experience. Let's delve into the five crucial stages of the in-store customer journey: Pre-visit, Entrance, Exploration, Purchase, and Post-Purchase.
Mapping the retail customer journey
Retail is a highly competitive industry, so it's important you acknowledge and target your customers' interactions before, during and after their purchase. To understand your customers' journey and to encourage them to convert, you can create a customer journey map. ... Typically, the retail customer journey tends to follow five stages ...
Automating the retail customer journey through technology
Capgemini's research shows the sector has evolved over four generations, from the early days of fragmented outlets to omnichannel and customer-centric focuses, with a fifth generation on the horizon that promises to be centered on consumption. Generation 1: Fragmented outlets. Generation 2: Chain concentration. Generation 3: Omnichannel.
Connected Customer Journeys in Retail
A connected end-to-end journey will help create positive experiences, increase interest and loyalty, and give your retail business a competitive edge. For example, the shopping experience should be as smooth as the checkout process. Likewise, the customer should not experience any obstacle during the return process.
PDF Adapting to the next normal in retail: The customer experience imperative
Exhibit 2. Omnichannel leaders are adapting to the next normal in customer experience by taking initiative across ve key actions. Double down. Embrace an agile operating model Reimagine the physical network. on digital Inject innovation into omnichannel. Transform store operations and win on "SafeX".
PDF The new retail customer journey.
Retail industry eBook The new retail customer journey. Solutions that address emerging challenges and shopper expectations. Trends and challenges that shape the customer journey There are five major trends that are shaping retailers' shopper engagement strategies today. With more options and an
PDF 2022 AND BEYOND: The Evolving Customer Journey
Retail Federation (NRF), noted that in 2020, "despite the pandemic, Americans spent more than $6 trillion in the retail industry. It was a record year that contributed almost $4 trillion to our nation's GDP." Currently, with media headlines warning of the economic impact of a spreading COVID-19 variant, consumers are cautious, but are still
Immediacy and the retail customer journey
Now or never: Immediacy and customer experience in fashion retail. The consumer psyche is changing fast. Technology leaders such as Amazon, Deliveroo, Netflix, and Uber Technologies have raised customer expectations of speed and convenience. Through its Prime offering, Amazon has created an expectation that delivery should be next day, or even ...
Understanding Retail Experiences and Customer Journey Management
Customer journey management (CJM) involves understanding and managing customers' experiences throughout their shopping journey. It is of paramount importance for every retailer and service provider to have a systematic and integrated CJM system in place. At the same time, it is just as important for manufacturers to understand customers ...
Understanding and Mapping the Retail Customer Journey
Your customer's journey is seldom linear. In fact, most customer journeys span multiple channels and touchpoints before they purchase. Retail is a highly competitive industry, so it's important you acknowledge and target your customers' interactions before, during and after their purchase.
Influencing the Retail Customer Journey: Tips for Enterprise Retail CMOs
The customer journey in retail refers to the process a customer goes through from the initial awareness of a product or brand to the final purchase and beyond. It encompasses all the touchpoints and interactions a customer has with a retail brand, both online and offline. Understanding the customer journey is crucial for a CMO as it allows them ...
Customer journey mapping in retail
The most important steps of journey mapping in retail are: Identify who the customers are: develop one or more personas to understand what needs and wishes you are confronted with. Understand the stages of customer behavior: commonly in retail we see the phases of discovery/awareness, purchase, retention and advocacy, however the stages can ...
Adapting to the next normal in retail
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the retail industry, forcing the closure of physical stores and causing uncertainty for the future of the in-store experience.These abrupt shifts have left many retailers scrambling to effectively serve customers through other channels. Digital-first and omnichannel retailers have pivoted more easily, but retailers that prioritized physical stores and face-to ...
Understanding the Retail Customer Journey Every Step of the Way
Explore the power of CXaaS >> CX Strategy When you have a great customer experience you know it. CX Strategy and Analytics unlocks actionable insights and a transformation roadmap to guide you. CX Technology Every channel, in sync, all the time. Cloud-based technology and intelligent automation powering effortless customer and employee experiences.
Personalizing the customer experience: Driving differentiation in retail
In general, a positive customer experience is hugely meaningful to a retailer's success: it yields 20 percent higher customer-satisfaction rates, a 10 to 15 percent boost in sales-conversion rates, and an increase in employee engagement of 20 to 30 percent. Customer-experience leaders in the retail space (retailers with consistently high ...
Retail Customer Journey
The retail customer journey is the path a shopper takes from the initial awareness of a product or a store to the final post-purchase experience. It's like a road map that guides customers through the various stages of their shopping expedition. Understanding this journey is crucial for retailers to craft a seamless and delightful customer ...
In Retail, Inclusive Customer Journeys Lead to Growth
By Madison Dyal Anderson, Naiara De Leon, Aaron Cheris, and Julie Coffman. October 16, 2023. 10 min read. Brief. In Retail, Inclusive Customer Journeys Lead to Growth. At a Glance. We surveyed US shoppers to determine how customer inclusion affects shopper behavior and what retailers should do to be inclusive. We found that inclusion matters to ...
A Retail Customer Journey Should Be A Story
The hero's journey is the path that the main character takes through a story, typically one based heavily on mythology. It's not the only possible path, but it's used a lot in genre fiction ...
Retail technologies that enhance the customer experience: a
Recent literature describes the proliferation of retail technologies and how they fit into each phase of the customer journey (Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020; Hoffman et al., 2022; Shankar et al ...

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