Two-thirds of convenience stores host ATMs with more financial services to come. 7-11 plans to install virtual commerce machines, where shoppers can cash checks, wire money, access the Web and, eventually, bank online at the store.
By reducing the number of stops customers have to make, retailers hope to help people more efficiently manage their time. Canada’s Pharmasave Drugs Ltd. now boasts "reading rooms," complete with fresh-brewed coffee and armchairs where spouses waiting for shoppers can relax. Says an executive with the company. "We’re creating an in-store experience."
High-Tech Shopping Tools
Increasingly, the in-store shopping experience includes interactive technology designed to help customers find products quickly and complete the transaction with as little interference or human interface as possible.
Altoona, Penn-based Sheetz convenience stores are installing touch-screen monitors from which customers can select made-to-order food items. Soon, they also can make purchases using a cell phone or personal digital assistant, and even place the order before they arrive at the store.
Explains Sheetz CEO, Stan Sheetz "Our business is about selling time back to
the people."
At Best Buy, Inc. clerks carry wallet-sized, handheld, wireless scanners to look up
prices, check supplies and provide customers with product information.
Some 50 Office Depot stores offer small-business owners the convenience of buying a combined scanner/PDA to create a master-shopping list that they can download to an office PC. Customers can monitor in-office inventory and automatically replenish supplies. In Circuit City stores kiosks offer unlimited Internet access so customers can research products and compare prices.
What About Customer Service?
While retailers talk about getting shoppers in and out as quickly as possible with the help of high-tech gadgetry, growing numbers of customers worry about the loss of human contact.
At some point, convenience no longer supercedes old-fashioned customer service. But where is that point? No one knows. Just as no one knows whether retailers’ recent investments in technology will pay off.
Forecast
Touch screen kiosks, in-store Internet access, handheld product-identification devices and self-service checkout lanes will become standard equipment in "bricks-and mortar" retail outlets.
It will become increasingly difficult to differentiate between grocery, drug and general merchandise stores.
Ultimately, too many choices will drive customers to specialty stores in boutiques to recover the shopping experience.