Shopping is a tactile, immersive experience. Actually, the word ‘experience’ is the point. Shopping isn’t just a series of transactions. It’s a journey, a social gathering, a multi-sensory cascade… You can describe it in many ways, but the one thing it shouldn’t be, is just a mere series of clicks or swipes. It’s got to be tactile at one point in the cycle.
And, by 2025 it definitely will be.
The race to enable consumers to touch and feel fabrics or other surfaces before they buy, for instance, clothes or furnishings, is most definitely on. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s fast becoming a reality. In fact, Fujitsu’s ‘Haptic’ tablet, which was prototyped a couple of years ago, offers users the ability to feel slipperiness, roughness and even bumps! The potential for retailers is immense.
It’s a subject that came up during the Fujitsu retail Webinar on 29th September. We were discussing the connected consumer, when a great question came in from our audience: how do you sell furniture successfully online?
At first the question sounded too specific – but then, when we talked it through, we realized that it was a question with much broader implications. We’d been talking about how the consumer needed to have a seamless experience across all channels – online and instore and everywhere in between. But we hadn’t segmented the market down to specific goods and services. Buying books or music online is very different to buying clothing. There are many people who do buy clothes – and what’s emerging from their experience is a greater emphasis on easy returns, click-and-collect, and reserving goods instore for fitting and choice.
The fact that consumers want to touch and feel the fabrics, and try the clothes on to see how they look (even if it’s a ‘Magic Mirror’) means that the technology has to span the entire consumer journey. There has to be unity in ‘the basket’. And that’s why many pure-play retailers are opening stores in the real world.
Made.com was cited as an example. The company has helped to pioneer online furniture sales, but they soon realized that consumers didn’t want the first time they sat on the sofa they’d ordered to be just after it was delivered to their homes. If it didn’t feel right, then the disappointment was intense. It would have to be re-collected, a new one ordered, delivered… with the danger than the consumer would still not be satisfied. So, Made.com opened showrooms. People responded positively. Some even made their visit an excuse for a day-out.
As Fujitsu’s ‘Haptic’ tablet shows, the technology exists to simulate touch and feel digitally via a screen. Fujitsu’s labs deployed ultrasonic vibrations that vary the friction between the touchscreen and the user’s finger. The different frequencies simulate slipperiness, bumpiness and roughness. That, in turn, allows the brain to get a sense of the heft or solidity of an object or a fabric. That won’t spell the end of big-box warehouses or stores. It just means that the deeper experience that customers get online will encourage them to make a trip to the store to see their potential purchase in… well, the actual wood or fabric. More stores will do what Made.com are doing: cleverly balance the real world with the online world. You try, you look, you touch, and then you order. Many clothing stores are going that way too. They don’t have massive stock-rooms on site, but use technology to balance the offline with the online world to create a rewarding, and very human experience instore.
