Retail Analysis
T
he British Retail Consortium (BRC) recently found that total year-on-year UK’s retail footfall in 2020 dropped by 43.4%. This comes due to Coronavirus-induced national lockdowns that hoped to stem the spread of the virus, which resulted in the forced closure of nonessential retail destinations. Such low levels of footfall confirm the fears of languishing consumer confidence, both as a result of the ongoing pandemic and the consequential economic fallout. Notably, December’s retail footfall fell by 46.1% in comparison to the year before but was also a 19.3% improvement on November’s footfall, when England went into its second national lockdown. As the third national lockdown went underway, retailers across the UK once again reverted to the government’s strict guidelines in terms of maintaining social distancing in-store and providing hand sanitiser for customers, but few made efforts to revitalise the shopping experience to attract customers amidst the pandemic. With these statistics in mind, CEO of Ubamarket, Will Broome, focusing on the state of the UK’s retail sector and how retailers must transform their operations to get customers back in-store says: “The statistics have made it very clear that whilst the retail sector has experienced a gradual increase in footfall over the past few weeks, consumer confidence is still extremely low- and this is expected to continue as a result of the third lockdown. “It’s great to see that retailers are doing a good job of upholding government guidelines and adhering to social distancing and hygiene measures in-store, but this is simply not enough to inspire customers to risk heading back to the high-street or shopping centre.” Broome believes that in order to entice customers back in-store, retailers must accept that the landscape has completely changed, and hygiene is only one of the concerns: “As a result, the whole shopping experience must be revitalised and transformed, to allow for increased hygiene and safety measures, but also addressing concerns around convenience, personalisation and ease of the consumer experience.” He points out that retail technology is one option which offers a solution to a number of these challenges, “enabling retailers to easily uphold safety guidelines whilst also hyper personalising and improving the convenience,” he notes. Will Broome’s business focus is Ubamarket, a scan, pay & go mobile app solution, designed to simplify in-store shopping, that aims to help retailers offer a streamlined, convenient and hyperpersonalised “select and pay” experience to their
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customers. The solution effectively puts the till in the customer’s hands on their own trusted device. By using the Ubamarket app, shops can offer a range of features to significantly improve the experiential nature of their customers’ shopping experience. Features such as pre-written shopping lists, aisle sat-nav, one-tap in-app payments, exclusive access to personalised deals, automatic loyalty point collection, table delivery, collection points and facial recognition/age verification (for age restricted products) are brought together in one allencompassing app, helping to rebuild consumer confidence in-store by enabling a fully socially distanced experience; whilst simultaneously reducing their shopping time, leaving them with the more enjoyable aspects of the process. Whilst BOON, a startup from Southampton, is employing artificial intelligence technology and psychology research to help online shoppers find the perfect products for themselves or a gift recipient whilst retaining complete control of their data. BOON’s founders, Dylan Grey explains: “Often, as you browse a retailer’s site, your actions are being collected and assigned to your account if you’re logged in, or your computer or phone if you’re not. These actions, such as your clicks and dwell time, are fed into an AI system to predict which products you are most likely to buy and make recommendations to you in the form of product listings, bundle recommendations or basket addons. This all happens behind the scenes. “However, as data privacy regulations become stricter and more shoppers are making use of tracking blockers, we need to find a better way to help people find great products. By using psychology research, we can create engaging, interactive experiences for consumers where they consciously provide a minimal amount of data to receive excellent product recommendations”, he says. BOON uses a new recommendation engine for anonymous data collection, as Grey explains: “BOON’s technology, Spotlight, gives consumers full control of their data. Instead of recording their actions behind the scenes, we create digital shopping assistants that ask the shopper about themselves or a gift recipient. Their responses remain anonymous and are analysed by our AI recommendation engine to pick out the best products for their situation. “We use psychology research to design our questions, so they may not seem directly relatable to specific products. For instance, asking an imagebased question like “Which of these holidays looks
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