The pandemic has changed a lot, including when it comes to the retail landscape. The lockdowns have accelerated the growth of e-commerce and driven digitization. But now that people are fluidly switching channels when shopping, their expectations for personalized online experiences are growing as well.
According to Adobe, to remain competitive in a digitally-centric economy, companies need to bring about change at every level of their organization. In Adobe’s ‘Digital Trends 2022’ report, David Carrel, vice president, marketing, Adobe Experience Cloud, says: “The pandemic has highlighted the need for organizations to become more agile, collaborate better, and accelerate time to value .”
It continued, “It prompted organizations to turn to real-time data and insights to manage the unexpected. They’ve also been forced to cross functional silos – across sales, marketing, product, IT, finance and support departments – to understand how to properly run a digital business from start to finish. As customers switched between interaction channels more frequently, the need for omnichannel personalization, automation and scalability became more urgent.”
Accelerated change
The way people work, communicate, socialize, shop and consume media has changed. The relationships between customers, companies, their employees, partners, suppliers and competitors will never be the same again. As people’s expectations continue to rise and competition intensifies, it has never been more important for businesses to align their processes with customers’ needs.
A shopping experience at a high level
Contextual, relevant and helpful personalization at scale is the imperative of 2022. However, shopping experiences can only be improved based on trust and solid foundations, from integrated data architecture to insightful analytics to effective marketing automation.
Keep the pace up
In PWC’s Global Consumer Insights Survey, 41 percent of respondents said they shop daily or weekly on their smartphone, compared to 39 percent six months ago and just 12 percent five years ago. Mobile shopping behavior is now converging with in-store shopping – only six percentage points separate the two. These changes in consumer habits are having a cascading effect on B2B companies and are accelerating existing trends in B2B e-commerce. Growth of 18.7 percent by 2028 is currently forecast for global B2B online trade.
demand for experiences
The reopening of physical stores makes it more difficult to interpret and meet customers’ wants and needs. For their part, people don’t care about the logistical barriers between the physical and online worlds. Best-in-class digital experiences in their everyday lives, from retail to entertainment, are setting the bar and relentlessly pushing expectations higher.
Meet people when and where they want
Organizations need to reconfigure hybrid interaction data collection. Then they need to connect the dots of the customer journey and create compelling, value-added experiences at every key stage of the buying process. What’s more, you have to build and maintain trust. That means you need to interact in a way that feels contextual and intuitive, rather than intrusive or surveillance.
Article source: Adobe Digital Trends 2022 Report