The Immersive Retail Experience

Digital displays can bridge the gap between the offline and online retail customer experience. That’s the lead of an interesting article recently published by Installation/AV Technology magazine.

Though the article does not use the term, we’d call this retailment. Video displays in retail settings have evolved far beyond simply showing advertising on a loop.  Working with the right audiovisual integrator, leading retailers can turn their displays into interactive video walls. These video walls are what can pierce through a huge challenge for brick-and-mortar retailers – the chasm between digital and physical customer experiences.

This is often called the ominchannel retail challenge. With zero visibility into customer behavior in-store, it is impossible to deliver a seamless brand experience. Without in-store transaction and behavioral data, retailers are hard pressed to customize or improve the store experience.

Eddie Bance, a retail consultant at Centrepoint AV, is quoted in the article talking about video displays going two-way and they need to deliver a better experience:

“Millennials form the highest proportion of shoppers and have the highest level of disposable income, together with the desire to experience retail transactions. They constantly interact with technology that responds to their wishes, desires and moods and anticipates their next moves. It’s no different in the shopping environment. Retail signage is no longer just a screen in a shop. It has to inform, engage, communicate and pre-empt shoppers’ desires.”

An interactive video wall can make this happen with in-store customers by making biometric technology possible. Biometric technology is a game changer because it enables multi factor authentication of the customer. Rather than a single factor such as a PIN number or password, these could include voice, facial recognition, GPS location data or a thumb print. 

Once authentication becomes something the customer always has on them (i.e. on their smartphones), a whole range of customization opens up that makes physical retail frictionless and unites the physical and digital purchasing experiences. Users and organizations can begin making collaborative decisions regarding the appropriate level of authentication, based on transaction value and risk management strategies. 

Retails stand to reap great benefits from the move to video walls and biometric technology. For mobile customers, improving the checkout process can dramatically reduce shopping cart abandonment. Increased security of charges can reduce the transaction traffic sent to high cost payment solution providers, while providing the customized experiences shoppers increasingly crave.  

The right video wall technology can provide a transformed retail experience, for the customer and for the brick-and-mortar business. By uniting the digital and physical transaction data of customers, current retail incumbents will be better positioned to defend market share. This is because providing retailment in this way transforms a large number of brick-and-mortar locations from a legacy challenge to a market advantage.