Here's an interesting article on the "customer of the future" and how retailers can be ready to meet their expectations.

1. www.retailcouncil.org/cdnretailer14 | CANADIAN RETAILER | THE MARKETING ISSUE THE MARKETING ISSUE | CANADIAN RETAILER | 15
PARTNER MESSAGE MICROSOFT
TO KNOW THE CUSTOMER
OF THE FUTURE, YOU
NEED TO UNDERSTAND
TODAY'S DIGITAL NATIVE
Retail companies are experiencing change on many fronts. Digital transformation
and how companies connect to and thrive with today’s new technology is, of
course, a huge part. However, there is another challenge facing the industry that
is equally transformative: how does retail effectively sell to a digital society?
BY DAVE RODGERSON, MICROSOFT
MILLENNIALS represent both an enormous op-
portunity and a great example in helping to ad-
dress this question. IDC calls them the “5i” shop-
pers: Instrumented, Interconnected, Informed,
In-place and Immediate. What is significant
about millennials is that they were the first gen-
eration born into a truly digital society. But they
continue to spend most of their retail dollars at
brick-and-mortar stores. Why?
I’m often talking with people about the ways re-
tailers need to blur the line between the physical
and digital experience; creating the “phygital”
space, if you will. The great thing about this is it
not only creates a more engaging customer ex-
perience, but it also serves to drive business back
and forth between the channels.
One of the coolest recent examples of this is
what Tim Hortons did with their offering of hockey
cards. These are a lot like the cards that kids have
always collected and traded with each other.
Millennials still make the majority of purchases at physical stores, presenting retailers with opportunity to offer engaging experiences.
The difference with these cards,
however, is that when you download
the Tim Hortons app and look at
the card through your smartphone,
the player on the card becomes ani-
mated. You see Carey Price flash-
ing the leather to make a great save,
or Sydney Crosby going top-shelf to
score a goal.
Where’s the value?
Now that you’re using the app,
Tim's can gather a great deal of in-
formation that may have been previ-
ously unavailable to them about your
frequency of shop and the products
you like. This is where the pot of gold
lies for the retailer. Data that can be
turned into actionable knowledge.
Consumers in the future will
have a far different perception of
privacy than previous generations.
The digital dative knows that you’re
collecting data concerning their
shopping behaviours. In return, they have the expectation that
you’ll do something with that information to make their shop-
ping experience easier, entertaining and more valuable.
Research points out that millennials are extremely interest-
ed in experiential environments, seeking to customize their
worlds. Their loyalty often depends on a customer-centric
experience that’s tailored to deliver on their wants and needs
right away. Their underlying need is that they want to feel en-
gaged and valued as customers.
So, how do we accomplish this?
The aim, of course, is to hit millennials with an exciting
customer experience that makes them want to engage and
pull-the-trigger on a purchase. One major focus is leveraging
interactive in-store components like digital signs, kiosks,
touchscreens, and videos, making it easy for customers to get
what they want, when they want it.
Another focus area is mobile. Retailers desperately need to
turn “showrooming” into sales opportunities with omnichannel
marketing strategies. Tapping into how customers use their mo-
bile phones while shopping inside the store can yield immedi-
ate results. Many shoppers go into stores with smartphones in
hand, looking for discounts, reading reviews over social net-
works, checking product details—and maybe even buying from
a competitor’s website—all while using the store’s Wi-Fi.
To take advantage of this behavior and combat potential com-
petitive encroachment, retailers can use Wi-Fi splash pages to
promote special in-store offers, or
use mobile location technology to
push messages or offers to consum-
ers when they are physically near
a store. By knowing a smartphone
user's precise location within a store
through Bluetooth beacons, retailers
can deliver highly relevant and com-
pelling content that can influence
purchase decisions, while giving
them more information about what
customers are looking at, and for
how long.
So, while today digital transform-
ation dominates the conversation,
we must not forget that there is
another paradigm shift occurring—
how buyers are drifting away from
the coldness of the retail online
space and into the warmth of brick-
and-mortar. How well companies
address this shift today could ul-
timately determine their future suc-
cess, helping them stay competitive
and relevant in the ever-expanding
digital frontier.
Find out how Microsoft Dynamics
for Retail can help you offer your
customers a unique value prop-
osition, delivering the connected,
personal, and relevant experiences
that customers expect, while bridging
the gap between in-store and digital
experiences with seamless CRM and
e-commerce solutions. To find out
more, visit www.microsoft.com/en-
us/dynamics365/home