The 10 biggest retailers around the world will adopt dynamic, personalised in-store pricing within the next six years, a new report predicts.
Research and advisory firm Gartner says that by 2025, the top 10 global retailers by revenue will use contextualised real-time pricing through mobile applications to manage and adjust in-store prices for customers.
Contextualised real-time pricing enables stores to manage and adjust prices and facilitate competitive price matching and returns for customers in real time, across all channels. This caters for a variety of considerations, such as competitive pricing, customer loyalty and item availability, Gartner explained.
“Digital sales continue to grow, but it’s no longer a competition between online and offline. Today, many retailers find that half of their online sales are supported by their stores,” commented Robert Hetu, vice president research analyst at Gartner.
“As customers share more data and information from various sources, they expect more personalised and meaningful offers from retailers. Retailers should assess personal data and product preferences, and translate those inputs into immediate and contextualised offers.”
To be able to offer consistent, relevant and personalised prices for customers, retailers need to understand customer behaviour across the various touchpoints. Digital twins – virtual models of processes, things, environments or people – can help to simulate behaviour and predict outcomes, including customer behaviour and preferences.
Adoption of mobile payments and retailer mobile apps also supports greater adoption of real-time in-store pricing, Gartner pointed out.
However, retailers face some customer experience and technology challenges in ensuring that the correct price is accessible in real time.
“Retailers need to educate customers in understanding the dynamic nature of pricing, which means that prices can rise or fall unexpectedly. Retailers also need to be better at managing delays in updating over-inventory and under-inventory levels,” Hetu said.
When implementing real-time pricing, stores should focus on enabling technologies such as a unified retail commerce platform, which uses centralised data for inventory, pricing, loyalty and other information to facilitate a cohesive experience, Hetu concluded.
Real-time pricing is one of many new business models that will be supported by the next wave of connectivity. Download our Next-generation connectivity report to learn more!
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