The use of IoT (Internet of Things) smart-carts in the retail industry is helping retailers to provide an enhanced customer experience.
The retail industry saw strong sales in 2018, and the same has continued in 2019. But, with the growth of the industry, customer expectations are also increasing rapidly. Customers are now expecting a more personalized and seamless experience while retail shopping. E-commerce websites can provide a personalized experience as they constantly gather customer data through various sources and provide services accordingly. But, for retail shops, it becomes challenging to meet the expectations of every individual customer as they cannot gather customer information and monitor their activities. But now, smart-carts can help retailers to meet the growing expectations of customers and enhance their overall shopping experience.
Use cases of smart-carts in retail shops
Manufacturers can embed IoT innovations into retail operations in smart-carts that can help customers in several ways and make their overall experience more engaging.
Helping to navigate
Customers can insert the list of products they want in a smartphone application that is connected to smart-carts. Based on the list, smart-carts can help customers to navigate around the store and find those products quickly. Further, smart-carts can help customers compare between similar products from different manufacturers based on nutritional information and prices. They can also suggest related products to customers. For instance, if a customer buys a shirt, then smart-carts can suggest jeans or pants available in the shop that go well with the shirt.
Avoiding checkout queues
One and probably the only tedious task while shopping is to stand in long checkout queues. If retailers are not able to manage checkout queues well in their shop, then they might lose some potential customers to competitors. But, smart-carts can help retailers to solve the checkout issue. Customers can scan their purchased products with the help of smart-carts. And, smart-carts can have embedded payment options through which customers can pay their final bills and checkout from the store without a need to stand in a queue. Thus, smart-carts will help provide a seamless shopping experience to customers.
Helping with product information
Smart-carts can scan products to show related product information, especially in the case of food products, to the customers. For instance, smart-carts can show ingredients, manufacturing details, and how to prepare information about a packaged food product. Further, smart-carts can also have screens to show recipe videos or dishes where the food product can be used, in an engaging way. Retailers can also use smart-carts to earn extra profit. They can partner with some brands and advertise their products on the smart-carts screen.
Customer service is the ultimate key to growth and success for every business. And customer service is the key differentiator in the retail industry. By using smart-carts, retailers can give their customers a sense of familiarity and retain them to grow their business. Also, when smart-carts assist customers, retailers can use the human workforce for other tasks that require decision-making skills like making and executing promotion strategies and improving inventory management.
