Retail Trends

Retail landscape and consumer behavior are constantly changing, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated that evolution like never before. Whether it’s a greater reliance on e-commerce, crafting shopping experiences with unique preferences, and providing seamless shopping journeys, shoppers have quickly adjusted to the “new normal.” Here are five retail marketing trends for retailers and brands to look out for in 2022

1. The Impact of Voice in Retail

Discovering the power of voice for eCommerce search is a major behavioral trend that directly affects retailing. As predicted, the voice becomes the dominant interface, impacting physical and digital retail. Digital merchants will need to enable voice for searching and browsing, in turn utilizing its power to create more lucrative and convenient consumer experiences. As for physical stores, it’s not impossible to see someone coming into an H&M store and asking Alexa to show them what’s new.

Voice assistants can provide store employees with instant access to sales data, collect orders, notification of any issues, delivery arrivals, levels of click, etc.

2. Visual Inspiration-Led Shopping

We keep hearing forecasts for a ‘Roaring 20s’ fashion, where extravagant outfits would take over when people go out again. This, together with developments in social and visual commerce, will usher in a new age for e-commerce, with customers looking for a return to normalcy relying more on visual inspiration.

The brands that will stand out will focus on capabilities such as shoppable live streams and highly visual, immersive on-site experiences such as visual search, curated inspirational or UGC galleries, video content and shoppable Pinterest boards, TikToks, and Instagram grids, and so on to make visual inspiration-led shopping easier.

3. The End of Dead Ends

Brands and merchants lose approximately $300 billion every year due to abandoned purchasing journeys and searches. Dead ends, such as unsatisfying search results, inappropriate product suggestions, and even out-of-stock products, will be solved in 2022.

Innovative brands and merchants have already begun to address this issue in two ways: A more smart merchandising approach aided by comprehensive product tags created from visual AI. This guarantees that only the most relevant goods are returned in searches. Second, such tags may be used to support alternative product discovery methods, such as proposing aesthetically comparable things when products are sold out, or no search results are available.

4. Privacy-Conscious Personalization

Consumers, it’s no secret, desire personalized experiences. In-store, this could be as simple as giving each store associate with an iPad to offer customers a more sophisticated, personalized shopping experience. Eighty-four percent of people are willing to pay a higher price for personalized service. However, as privacy concerns develop, 2022 will be “the beginning of the end of personalization that mainly relies on demographic data.”

Instead, brands and retailers will offer more personalized suggestions based on alternative data sources like deep product data, which captures the tiniest visual characteristics of the products that customers engage with on-site. Customers benefit from hyper-personalized experiences tailored to their specific interests without having to provide personal information.

5. Tech Ecosystem Consolidation

Consolidation is the next logical step for an e-commerce business that uses tens of website tech solutions. Brands and retailers will seek full-stack solutions to eliminate dependency on fragmented technology, acquire a unified view of data, and build connected customer experiences.

This is already happening in the product discovery ecosystem, where visual and text search, personalization, recommendations, and product tagging are all integrated into a single platform. With fewer consolidated data points, retailers can better understand their customers, connect them with the right products, and create amazing experiences.

Manage your entire retail chain with ChainDrive

In 2022, brands and retailers can have plenty of chances to embrace. Focus on how Covid-19 has affected customers and cater to these consumers’ changing behaviors to stay ahead of the curve. Retail is ever-changing. One of the best things retailers can do for their customers and employees is to equip them with better tools in order to make shopping more accessible.

Multidev Technologies is one of the omnichannel/ERP/ POS software developers to modernize your in-store and online experience – specialized in digital transformation and step-by-step guides on implementing contingency plans, touchless technologies, or stepping up remote retail strategies based on your goal. Consult our retail software experts to see how ChainDrive would fulfill your retail needs.