Chapter 10
How We Buy
Redefining Shopping and Payment
There you are, standing in the sports equipment store swinging the latest club from your favorite manufacturer. You love the club and you're ready to buy. Do you whip out your wallet? Or your phone?
Business Model Shift 1: For Retailers, the Customer Is in Control
Increasingly, consumers are pulling out their phones at the point of sale, finding out whether that big screen TV, pair of designer shoes, or the latest driver at the pro shop can be purchased at a lower price around the block or online and delivered by mail within a few days. In every product category, online sales are increasing and physical retail locations are under pressure.
There is a fundamental shift under way in consumer's expectations of the purchase experience. The old funnel of consumer demand translating to a purchase decision has been permanently disrupted. Access to information, peer opinion, alternative purchase mechanisms, direct connections to manufacturers, and new loyalties to online merchants have tilted the playing field away from even the largest retailers. The customer is in control.
If you are a retailer this raises a host of new challenges in a marketplace where you have already been challenged by the economic downturn, where increased debt to savings ratios has impacted consumption, and the overall low consumer confidence has kept people out of shops. But now on top of all this, a more efficient purchase and delivery mechanism, complete ...
