Why WiFi Quality Matters for Retailers
A new research reveals that the quality of WiFI could bolster sales at larger retail stores
Given the focus on customer experience as the panacea for sales growth, retail stores and large chains may benefit from upping the quality of their WiFi capabilities at the store-level. Given how the millennials use smartphones to decide on a purchase, ensuring seamless connectivity within a store could be just what could propagate a research-online, buy-offline (ROPO) culture.
While ROPO itself is not new as the smartphone and accessories business has long relied on providing lots of content around a new launch. However, with the integration with digital stores such as Amazon and Flipkart, buyers often find what they are looking for on digital news networks and click on the “Buy Here” button to acquire it.
However, when it comes to the non-gadget categories, customers still prefer the look-and-feel factor, which is where big retailers come in as do top-notch WiFi quality. A research by Extreme Networks says of the 114 major retailers surveyed globally, 92% want to use the consumer’s handsets for store operations.
Smartphones as a single point of purchase
What’s more, they see a direct correlation between consumer purchases and their ability to better manage inventories and pricing. Of course, IT teams at several of these companies need to work harder in order to get their in-store networks up to speed, says the report titled, “The World is Connected: The Store Must Be Too”.
The report notes that three-quarters of those surveyed felt their networks could add bandwidth and access points and do so quickly to keep pace with business needs. Amongst those surveyed only a third described their existing network as “state-of-the-art” while just over half of them felt that it was “good enough”.
The survey conducted by Retail Systems Research also reviewed how WiFi for both in-store and customer experience journeys. Questions revolved around how it impacted customer experience and the sort of use cases that stores had come up with. These include virtual warehousing, loss prevention, electronic shelf labeling, digital displays and inventory checks.
Better WiFi has meant better sales
One of the big reveals from the survey revolved around the contrast between the group with above-average sales growth and the rest. It was quite clear that those using the network as a strategic asset benefited monetarily as well. Among retailers with average or lagging sales, only 26% had enhanced their WiFi network while in the other group this number jumped to 63%.
While nearly three-quarters of those who had robust growth felt that tracking data was crucial to their growth while in the group with average or low sales, only 43% agreed. In other words, it is quite evident that retailers with strong sales perceive the value of technology differently and are leaning towards enhancing customer experience with innovative tech.
In fact most of those surveyed agreed that “good enough” was not good enough when it comes to the quality of WiFi, especially when it comes to the final check-out. One of the use cases that came up involved customers looking up the catalogs before even arriving at the store. With top notch WiFi, store staff could probably update their electronic shelves in a jiffy and even let the customer know that their requirement is available now.
In fact, this is where faster adoption of new WiFi standards becomes crucial. Companies and their stores still running a WiFi-5 network is akin to using an iPhone 7 where it would do the basics but leave out lots that can be done. Imagine a customer looking up products or doing a price comparison on a lagging network?
The general belief is that the additional bandwidth and security of WiFi-6 and WiFi-7 (when it becomes available) would help retailers support more in-store technology such as assist management and tracking, in-aisle digital displays and customer self-scanning. All of these would require stronger connectivity, says the report.
