Magasin du Nord

Ben Pashley

What, according to you, are the significant challenges or trends in the retail space right now?

One of the major challenges would definitely be around delivering a high-quality customer experience. A good customer experience can have lasting effects on a customer, leading a customer to become your brand ambassador.

Today, an incredible amount of activity goes into making the customer experience as seamless as possible in stores. But with the proliferation of online stores,the global pandemic, and the ever-evolving economy, the complexity of those activities has increased further. Since consumers’ approach towards physical retail stores has been declining,it has resulted in employee downsizing because retailers are seeing less revenue in physical stores. Hence, with fewer shop assistants, retail stores have to continue offering the same level of customer experience, which has become one of the primary challenges today in the physical retail landscape.

What are some of the industry’s ongoing trends in online retail?

With the boom of e-commerce, the power that consumers wield is higher than ever before. Customers keep moving seamlessly between offline and online stores today and expect similar customer experiences across all channels. On the one hand, consumers have become open to retailers who can best provide and facilitate in-store research and showrooming, wherein they browse products in-store and buy online.

"Always try putting the customer at the centre of your retail transformation strategy. Have market strategy based on understanding the customer needs; that will prove beneficial to your customer and your core market"

On the other hand, consumers are looking for retailers with competencies for seamless product returns. Many buyers today want to purchase online and return them to the store.While it may sound easy, it is often difficult to keep track of omnichannel returns and inventories. Culminating to these, retailers are reinventing their business model to serve customers better.We are adapting to tackle these challenges and appear more appealing to our customers. But the process is still in the infant stage.

Can you mention any recent project you have worked on that is bringing differentiation to retail space?

Overall, retail stores are undergoing significant changes. To ensure we are at the forefront of this change,we have adopted a new approach within Magasin du Nord. We have transformed our physical stores into modern, relevant, and unique shopping experience sites. Recently, we introduced new smart fitting rooms with checkout options to engage our in-store buyers to shop more with the interactive online checkout experience,replacing traditional cash counters. With the help of self-service kiosks, we are also shrinking traditional consumer-to-shop assistant interactions for basic FAQs and addressing customer complaints quickly, which in turn is helping our staff to spend their time on value-added customer service.

While designing a store, what are the few strategies in your playbook?

We try to keep a mix of ‘cool and casual’ approach in design for the customer. We constantly try and bring out our heritage, while keeping our branch flexible and open to modern changes.

On top of that, We have large stores. We utilise that to our advantage to provide enhanced customer experiences. We try and host events to showcase products and services, and create popup stalls to promote newer or popular brands. Through each of these endeavours, we try and create a lasting memorable and hands-on experience with our customers.

What advice would you like to give readers of this article going through any retail transformation?

Given the convenience of online shopping, physical stores need to provide customers with a reason to visit stores. So, always try putting the customer at the centre of your retail transformation strategy. Have market strategy based on understanding the customer needs; that will prove beneficial to your customer and your core market.

Alongside, having the same retail store layout across numerous locations is an outdated idea today,so focus on a store as a single business rather than a combined unit. For instance, our stores in shopping and city centres look different from our other flagship stores in various locations. This is because they all have different customer bases. So,it is imperative to understand the wants and needs of the customer base in each location, and tailor the store to meet those customer expectations.