This article is provided by BRC Associate Member Flux.

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It’s been two years since the onset of the pandemic, and we’re all getting used to what the ‘new normal’ looks like — as cliche as that may sound!

Retail has changed forever. During lockdowns, almost all shopping shifted online, and this shows little sign of stopping. Between March 9th and 16th 2020, online shopping increased by 55% globally. However, with the removal of COVID restrictions in the UK, customers are returning to store. In fact, 73% of overall retail sales will still be offline in 2023.

The numbers can tell us a lot. A YouGov survey found that 69% of UK shoppers say they will continue in-store shopping post-pandemic. And even though that same survey found that 21% of British shoppers say they enjoy in-store shopping less now than before COVID, they continue to rely on in-store shopping options for ease, speed, and community.

But post pandemic, shopping is a whole different ball game. Consumers have experienced the ease and convenience of online shopping, so retailers need to rethink the in-store experience. What are digital shoppers doing in-store, and what can we do to give purpose to the act of in-store shopping?

Understanding the shopping journey of your consumers is key to giving them a positive in-store experience, and this starts with collecting data.

Existing data collection methods miss a trick

With 70% of customers preferring an in-store shopping experience that offers streamlined features and personalisation, retailers are often left with a gap in understanding what their customers do in-store.

Getting data from online shoppers is easy — but analysing the habits of in-store and multi-channel shoppers presents a hurdle.

For many retailers, it is necessary to turn towards loyalty cards, apps, or their own e-commerce platforms to understand their customers. Often these include a value exchange — the customer receives something, like a discount code or freebie, in exchange for signing up and granting access to their data.

In a perfect world, this would be enough. But this form of data collection often presents its own set of problems.

If you use an app that shoppers have to download, it’ll come with extra costs for your company to set up and maintain. Plus you need to get your customers to actually download your app. If you introduce a physical card, customers often don’t bother to swipe at checkout.

This leaves retailers with a knowledge gap around what all of their customers are doing across all of their channels, inhibiting the delivery of a true omnichannel experience. Do customers buy the same items in-store as they do online? Are there particular items that seem to only move online? How frequently are customers shopping across channels?

There are so many questions to be answered around your customers’ shopping behaviors across channels — you just need the right tools to unlock the data.

Flux can offer retailers a secret weapon to learn more about their customers

Building a 360-degree analysis of customers is possible by digitising receipts. 

Flux allows retailers to generate digital receipts in customers' banking apps. These digital receipts link customers to their transactions at retailers, whether the purchase was made online or in-store. With zero behaviour change from the customer, this creates a data set of what SKUs or items unique customers have bought across your channels.

With this intel, you can understand what purchases customers are making, where they’re making them and incentivise customer shopping behaviours with cashback offers at the product or category level.

When plugged into a retailer’s point of sale and e-commerce/web systems, Flux can use this data to give you a true omnichannel view of your customers and trigger changes in customer behaviour through product and category level cashback offers.

Flux is a digital receipts and offers platform that lives inside a customer’s banking app. Using Flux is completely seamless for both customers and retailers, requiring no additional apps, QR codes or sharing email addresses at the point of checkout.