Retail Experience 2.0: Enhanced Shopping with the Scan & Go App
With Scan & Go, stationary retail is seeing a game-changing service for customers and retailers alike. The mobile self-checkout app not only provides a much smoother shopping experience but also offers a wide range of opportunities for retailers: from upselling, to personalization, to loss prevention.
The story of retail innovations is a long and complex one. It started with the invention of the cash register in 1879, passing the break-through success of barcodes nearly 100 years later, and leading up to earlier self-checkout concepts, such as self-service terminals and pre-scanning solutions.
With full mobile self-checkout in the shape of a Scan & Go app, stationary retail is currently entering a new era of convenience. Not only does this new technology speed up the shopping process considerably but it also makes the experience a much more refined and personal one, since the app allows the combination of a number of previously individual services, such as
- Shopping lists
- Personalized recommendations
- Indoor navigation and location-based marketing
- Interactive product information
- Storage of digital receipts
- Contactless shopping
- Connection to loyalty programs
And the list goes on. However, to illustrate the improved convenience for customers and the potential for an enhanced shopping experience more clearly, let’s look at selected features in detail.
Shared shopping lists with the Scan & Go app
A very popular feature with Scan & Go solutions is the opportunity to create personalized shopping lists. Since the retailer’s product range is available from anywhere, it’s as easy as opening the app and browsing through the items before the actual shopping trip. Conveniently, customers can check if the products they would like to purchase are currently out of stock and show alternative branches where the product would be available. For families or shared households, users may use multiple phones as well in order to create a shared shopping list and synchronize their individually required products.
Furthermore, due to data of past purchases being collected, a good Scan & Go app will suggest additional items to the shopping list that may have run out by now, have become available again or might be interesting to the customers based on their buying behavior.
Indoor navigation for more efficient shopping
To improve the shopping experience even more, Scan & Go also allows for an assisted indoor navigation for customers. This usually works with the help of Bluetooth technology – more specifically iBeacons – installed throughout the store, keeping track of customers’ mobile devices with the Scan & Go app installed.
While customers may use this to better find their way to the products on their shopping lists, the indoor navigation feature also proves useful for the retailer. It visualizes customer movements, thus helping to optimize the product placement in store and also offering potential for upselling by recommending interesting nearby products not only based on the shoppers’ buying preferences but also on their current location in the shop.
Furthermore, it serves as a direct link between employees and customers, allowing the latter to call for assistance from wherever they are currently located.
Spot checks and re-scanning: loss prevention made easy
Spot checks and re-scanning should be an important part of any retail store’s loss prevention strategy. When these re-scans are integrated in an efficient way, they also become an important asset for the customers to truly enjoy the benefits of a smooth shopping experience.
Thus, an additional, tailor-made app for employees is an invaluable feature for the retail staff as it allows them to perform random checks of shopping baskets in the most efficient way possible. A smart suggestion algorithm supports the employees by suggesting individual customers for spot checks, focusing on risk groups but also ensuring that regular customers only get inspected at pre-set intervals.