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The flip side is that when systems are not intuitive enough, companies run the risk of having a disconnect at the store associate level – whether it’s a person with a high touch retailer or the clerk in a grocery store. “If we haven’t made their day easier or shown them how to make it easier, they won’t adopt the technology and the program is going to die,” he said.

Ocado in Europe, and in Canada where Loblaws is offering a subscription to

But, Klein said, consumers may never open it and eventually disgard it because they’re only dealing with a particular retailer on an event like Black Friday. Or, they may only use an app for a purchase like furniture or home remodeling every few years. On the other hand, grocery is a regular purchase. “We eat all the time and that content is used on our phones,” Klein said. “If I want my loyalty points and e-coupons, I’m going to keep the mobile app. This gives you a clear advantage over retailers who only engage with customers only a few times a year.” The question that remains is how to optimize the mobile shopping experience. That’s where Adobe enters the picture. “Retailers need to leverage a unified customer profile that goes across all touch points whether a customer is on a desktop or mobile phone,” he said. “The technology is only one piece. It’s about how to reshape processes and shift organizations. As operators in a traditional legacy business, grocery is going to see that more and more over next couple of years.” There are a lot of mechanisms in managing the supply chain, according to Klein. “Retailers have to determine how to bring new teams and processes into a legacy business like grocery that relies on perishables.” One way is to focus on combining the best of both worlds. “I first heard the term “phygital” in 2015. It’s about using the best of physical retailing and digital together,” he said, pointing to the relationship between the Casino chain with

their loyalty card members that is similar to Amazon Prime. But there are common mistakes retailers make when looking at integration of brick and mortar with digital. “It always starts at the

top,” he said. “So, if you see a good alignment between store operations and the CMO, there’s usually a chief digital officer.”

“The technology is only one piece. It’s about how to reshape processes and shift organizations.”

That kind of education depends on the type of program retailers have put together. “If you’re going to hand them device like a phone or iPad, put a program in place that allows associates to understand how to use it properly for their benefit as well as the customers,” he said. When it comes to redesigning and enhancing the customer experience with promotions, 65 percent of those surveyed by Adobe noted that discounts and promotions were not sufficiently personalized. Which raises the question regarding at what point does customization become overly intrusive and even unnecessary.

Additionally, retailers need to focus digital efforts on education at the customer and store associate level, Klein pointed out. “You have to understand what scalability means in that environment,” he suggested. “We’ve seen many exciting programs that were aligned at the corporate level and everyone at headquarters thought things were great. “But when they rolled out the program two things happened – first, the digital tool was not that intuitive and while it may be changing the shopping paradigm, it does nothing to change the experience.”

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