Trends in stationary retail

The EHI is once again publishing its new Shop Monitor 2020 just in time for EuroShop. The most important factors for retailers are now the visual appearance and shopping experience in stores.

This is not surprising, as online retail continues to grow and shoppers' expectations of convenience continue to grow. Everything has to be fast and uncomplicated, but nevertheless you want to be inspired in store by the atmosphere and the product presentation, if you go to the store instead of ordering online.

Now stationary retail has already changed a lot. New and renovated stores now have an appealing shop design, new furniture and an emphasis on profiling categories. Lighting, images and colours should also contribute to the feel-good atmosphere.  It is therefore not surprising that the preliminary results of the EHI showed that a large part of the investment is being made in optimising old stores.

But what use is the renovation and upgrading of the entire store if the product presentation in shelves, deep freezers and coolers continues to appear disordered?

Because this is one of the most important basics for shopper satisfaction, that a good orientation is possible and that all products are visible and accessible. All products should also be available.

To achieve this, you need front presentation solutions. There are pushfeed systems, lift and sliding systems that have been proven to help retailers achieve higher sales and a much higher-quality appearance.

New beacon technology also makes it possible to completely avoid out of stocks and automatically re-order for shelves.

In times of a lack of qualified personnel in retail, these systems can also contribute to a great relief of employees. This is because there is no need for products to be sorted and pulled forward on a daily basis. Daily stock checks and reordering are also no longer necessary if digital solutions are used.

In return, employees can take better care of advising customers, as this is also an important factor from the point of view of retailers to stand out from online retail by providing courteous service. Or another checkout is occupied so that shoppers can get out of the store more quickly.

Another trend is self-scanning, because for shoppers the worst part of shopping is the checkout area, which is not convenient and where it is much more complicated and slower than in the online shop. At the end of the purchase each product was touched at least three times, although the technology is already further. It's not for nothing that many retailers have already created an additional option to classic cash registers or even completely do without cash registers and scanning like Amazon Go. These developments will certainly continue to grow over the next few years. One can remain curious.