Rising inflation, supply chain disruptions, and a rocky economic outlook for 2023 may have retailers feeling spooked this year, especially as companies are still recovering from the pandemic.
But there is plenty of opportunity for brands to use technology to innovate and thrive in the new year. Here’s an overview of the most important trends every retailer needs to pay attention to in 2023.
Personalized Products and Customer Journeys
Retail consumers love customized products that are made just for them. Research from Deloitte indicates that customers are willing to pay a 20% premium for personalized products.
Retailers are leveraging this trend to apply personalization at scale.
Companies like California-based Stitch Fix use algorithms to select clothes that are a “perfect fit” for the sizes and personal tastes of its customers, and Nike launched a “Nike by You” experience that enables customers to create personalized sneakers to match their footwear style and preferences.
In 2023, we’ll see more retail brands capitalizing on this growing demand for unique and personalized products that reflect consumers’ personalities, sense of style, and other needs.
Omnichannel Retail
Online shopping offers convenience, making it easy for us to shop for just about anything without leaving our homes and offices. With online shopping, retailers can also track our behavior to build a detailed view of what we’re interested in and what experiences we prefer.
At the same time, offline shopping in physical stores allows us to pick up what we need, right at the moment we need it (as long as the store’s open), and lets us pick up, touch, feel, and try on products before we buy.
But now online and offline shopping have merged, and smart brands are creating hybrid experiences that combine the two to create seamless customer purchasing journeys.
For example, retailers are moving toward understanding who customers are (and what they want) when they enter brick-and-mortar stores. In luxury fashion company Burberry stores, the company is using technology to identify customers and look up their past purchases and the items they’ve previously viewed online, so Burberry can present relevant offers.
Online retailers are also using innovative technology and augmented reality technology to provide innovative shopping experiences for shoppers.
Retailers will continue to bring online and offline shopping trends together in 2023.
The Metaverse and Immersive Experiences
Retail consumers crave high-quality shopping experiences above all else, which means brands need to provide seamless, consistent, memorable services.
There is a lot of excitement around the concept of the metaverse — an immersive, experiential internet where users can work, play, socialize, and shop. Some retailers are on the cutting edge of this trend already.
Beloved brands like Cheetos and McDonald’s have already established a presence in the metaverse. Retailers like Walmart, Warby Parker, Avon, and Hugo Boss enable customers to virtually try on clothing, accessories, and makeup using digital representations of themselves.
Consumers will continue to seek immersive and fun ways to shop and spend their disposable income, so we can expect to see more retail brands adopting metaverse technology in 2023.
Streamlined, Efficient Shopping and Delivery
Consumers want the entire buying process to be as streamlined and efficient as possible. One of the biggest trends for 2023 is cashless, contactless, autonomous shopping and delivery. Convenience trends that focus on the all-important “last mile” of the retail experience are growing in popularity as customer demands increase.
For example, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), buy-online-pickup-at-curbside (BOPAC), and buy-online-return-in-store (BORIS) are quickly becoming standard for retailers. Autonomous delivery is also becoming more common as companies roll out real-world deployments of delivery vehicles, drones, and robots.
Bernard Marr
Bernard Marr is afuturist, strategic advisor to companies and governments and award-winning author of new bookFuture Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World(Wiley, out now).
