Report Summary

People have changed the way they shop. Rather than going to the nearest store to research and make a purchase, many will now research online and buy in-store, or vice versa. Moreover, especially with mobile technology becoming more popular, people expect to be able to shop whenever they want and wherever they are. Retailers have little choice but to react to behaviour that has already changed, and to consumers who are increasingly intolerant of being told that they must fit in with a seller’s choice of time and location.

In practice, this can mean some major changes for retailers, whose operations are often organised around a physical store network, with separate businesses covering areas such as online and telephone sales. Companies need to reorganise to abolish the distinction between individual business units. Staff incentives and targets need rethinking, so that they take account of wider sales, including online, rather than simply measuring the performance of an individual store or sales channel. And there needs to be investment in information technology (IT), so that all the various platforms are unified from a user’s point of view.

In this report The Economist Intelligence Unit asked retailers and analysts what has been done already, and what needs to be done, to become omnichannel—meaning not just whether retailers are using a variety of sales platforms, from physical stores to online and smartphone apps, but also whether they have joined up the various technologies being used, so that customers enjoy a seamless shopping experience wherever and however they buy. We also separated out the retailers who responded to the global survey to get a snapshot of industry opinion.

The overall size of the retail market might not be impacted [by the growing popularity of Internet shopping], but it will continue to have a huge impact on the business of individual retailers.

-David Oliver, head of retail consulting at PwC

Research Methodology

Creating a seamless retail customer experience is an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report, sponsored by Panasonic. It uncovers what the future of the customer experience could look like in retail and how retailers can create a seamless, friction-free experience for consumers. The report draws on a global survey of 491 senior executives and 2,403 consumers as well as desk research and in-depth interviews with ten senior executives, consultants and experts.

In August-September 2014 the EIU surveyed 491 senior executives, 62 of whom (13%) are in retail. Of the retailers surveyed, around one-third (35%) are C-level executives or board members, and the vast majority (89%) work in IT. The retail respondents come from across the world, with 55% based in North America, 35% in Europe and the remaining 10% in the rest of the world. Around two-thirds (68%) of the retailers surveyed record annual sales of over US$500m.

The EIU also surveyed 2,403 consumers aged between 18 and 65 from across the world, with 8% each from the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the UK and the US.

• Julie Carlyle, head of retail, EY
• Richard Cope, senior trends consultant, Mintel
• Amanda Glover, senior manager (PR), Marks & Spencer
• Miya Knights, senior research analyst, IDC
• Peter Massey, managing director, Budd
• David McCorquodale, head of retail, KPMG UK
• Valerie Nygaard, senior director of buyer experience, eBay
• David Oliver, head of retail consulting, PwC
• Bill Price, president of Driva Solutions and formerly Amazon's first vice-president of global customer service
• Ben Silcox, head of data and digital, Havas EHS 

The report was written by Michael Kapoor and edited by Martin Koehring.