NEW YORK (AP) — One of America’s favorite pastimes is changing rapidly.
When
it comes to shopping, more Americans are skipping the stores and
pulling out their smartphones and tablets. Still, there’s more on the
horizon for shopping than just point-and-clicking.
No one thinks
physical stores are going away permanently. But because of the frenetic
pace of advances in technology and online shopping, the stores that
remain will likely offer amenities and services that are more about
experiences and less about selling a product. Think: Apple Inc.’s
stores.
Among the things industry watchers are envisioning are
holograms in dressing rooms that will allow shoppers to try on clothes
without getting undressed. Their homes will be equipped with smart
technology that will order light bulbs before they go dark. And they’ll
be able to print out a full version of coffee cups and other products
using 3-D technology in stores.
"Physical shopping will become a lot more fun because it’s going to have to be," retail
futurist Doug Stephens says.
MORE SERVICES
Forrester
analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says stores of the future will be more about
services, like day care, veterinary services and beauty services.
Services that connect online and offline shopping could increase as
well, with more drive-thru pickup and order-online, pick-up-in-store
services. Checkout also will be self-service or with cashiers using
computer tablets.
Some stores are taking self-service further:
A
store in Seattle called Hointer displays clothing not in piles or on
racks but as one piece hanging at a time, like a gallery.
Shoppers
just touch their smartphones to a coded tag on the item and then select
a color and size on their phone. Technology in the store keeps track of
the items, and by the time a shopper is ready to try them on, they’re
already at the dressing room.
If the shopper doesn’t like an item,
he tosses it down a chute, which automatically removes the item from
the shopper’s online shopping cart. The shopper keeps the items that he
or she wants, which are purchased automatically when leaving the store,
no checkout involved.
Nadia Shouraboura, Hointer’s CEO, says once shoppers get used to the process, they’re hooked.
"They end up buying a lot more, they’re laughing and playing with it," she says.
ON-DEMAND COUPONS
Some
stores like British retailer Tesco and drugstore Duane Reade now are
testing beacons, Bluetooth-enabled devices that can communicate directly
with your cellphone to offer discounts, direct you to a desired product
in a store or enable you to pay remotely.
For example, you can
walk into a drugstore where you normally buy face cream. The beacon
would recognize your smartphone, connect it with past purchasing history
and send you a text or email with a coupon for the cream.
"The
more we know about customers … you can use promotions on not a macro
level but a micro level," says Kasey Lobaugh, chief retail innovation
officer at Deloitte Consulting. A store could offer a mother 20 percent
off on Mother’s Day, for example, or offer frequent buyers of paper
towels a discount on bulk purchases.
That appeals to Seattle resident Sarah Hamilton, 31, who says discounts definitely draw her into stores.

"I
don’t like the idea of my data grabbed onto by random marketers online,
but if it was an actual store I’m interested in, I would be OK with
that," Hamilton says.
3-D PRINTING
Within 10 years, 3-D
printing could make a major disruption in retail, Deloitte’s Lobaugh
predicts. Take a simple item like a coffee cup. Instead of producing one
in China, transporting it and distributing it to retail stores, you
could just download the code for the coffee cup and 3-D print it at a
retail outlet or in your own home.
"That starts a dramatic change
in terms of the structure of retail," Lobaugh said. And while 3-D
printing today is primarily plastic, Lobaugh says there are tests at
places like MIT Media Lab and elsewhere with other materials, including
fabric.
"The big question is when," he says. Right now a few
stores offer rudimentary 3-D-printing services, but they are very
limited. He predicts the shift will come in 10 to 20 years.
ORDER YOURSELF
Steve
Yankovich, head of innovation for eBay, thinks someday buying household
supplies won’t take any effort at all. He says someday a connected home
could be able to use previous customer history and real-time data the
house records to sense when a light bulb burns out, for example, and
order a new one automatically. Or a washing machine will order more
detergent when it runs low.
"A box could show up on porch with
this disparate set of 10 things the connected home and eBay determined
you needed to keep things running smoothly," he says. "It’s called
zero-effort commerce."
Raquel Ribera, 32, in Carpinteria,
California, said she cut back on store shopping when she moved to a less
urban area, and would appreciate a service like that.
"Everybody
has that nagging to-do list, the random light bulb or batteries to
purchase, that’s super easy to forget," she says. "If it came to my door
automatically that would be nice."
HOLOGRAMS
EBay recently
bought PhiSix, a company working on creating life-size 3-D models of
clothing that can be used in dressing rooms to instantly try on
different colors of clothing or different styles. You can see 30 or 40
items of clothing realistically without physically trying them on.
EBay’s
Yankovich says the technology can be used in a virtual dressing room as
well, showing what the clothes look like when you are, say, walking
down the street or hitting a golf club.
Some companies have been
testing this already. British digital agency Engage created a Virtual
Style Pod that scanned shoppers and created a life-size image onto which
luxury clothing from brands like Alexander McQueen and DKNY were
projected. The Pod was displayed in shopping centers in Dubai and Abu
Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
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