‘The barriers between retail channels are fading and we’re moving into a new era’

Thirty years ago, Sting released his fourth studio album, Ten Summoner’s Tales. It won a Mercury Prize. But that’s not its only claim to fame.

A user on a website called NetMarket bought the CD for $12.48 (plus shipping) in August 1994. But they did it in an unusual way – by entering their credit card details and receiving the album a few weeks later in the mail.

Ecommerce was born. Three decades and more than $6,310bn of sales later, online transactions have reshaped the world.

 A lot has changed in 30 years. So what can we expect from the future?

The evolving value of loyalty

Consumer behaviours have fluctuated over the years, and most recently we can see that businesses and consumers are spending more cautiously as they navigate a challenging economic climate.

Shopify’s State of Commerce report found that just one in six UK shoppers are optimistic about the economy and their personal situation, and shoppers are more considered than ever in how and when they spend.

So what does this tell us about the future of consumer behaviour? It shows us that loyalty is king.

The cost of acquiring new customers is rising for a lot of businesses, which is why many are investing in tools that drive loyalty.

Generative AI tools, for example, are empowering businesses to effectively deliver the personal touch consumers expect across touchpoints.

These details matter. More than four in five UK shoppers say they would become more loyal to brands if they were offered something – for instance, high-quality goods or services, promotions or surprises. With consumer spending under pressure, offering those experiences and securing that loyalty is crucial.

A unified vision for commerce

Looking beyond consumer habits to retailers themselves, over the past 30 years, businesses have built a multichannel approach.

But it’s important to remember that channels don’t exist in the minds of customers. A brand isn’t split into online or offline. It exists as a whole.

Retail is following this direction of travel. The barriers between channels are fading as businesses become a singular entity, where one core platform connects all the dots and data across every touchpoint. Physical or digital.

Consumers expect the same experience across all touchpoints. And retailers can only meet these expectations if they are able to establish a 360 view of the customer and their journey.

Omnichannel doesn’t encompass this. An omnichannel strategy optimises what a customer sees, delivering a relatively consistent experience across all your sales channels. But it’s focused on the front end.

“We’re moving into the era of unified commerce, and it’s being defined by the businesses who are prepared to meet shoppers where they are”

The future goes further, centralising all of your valuable data under a single platform – this is unified commerce.

A single, centralised platform helps businesses leverage their data at every stage in the buyer’s journey, minimising lost opportunities and delivering a better customer experience in the process.

This approach overcomes the challenges of omnichannel, such as conflicting or incomplete customer data, by ensuring that every interaction is informed by a single source of truth.

Technology changes quickly. But the principles of success in retail are still the same. We’re moving into the era of unified commerce, and it’s being defined by the businesses who are prepared to meet shoppers where they are.

Fields of gold

The world has changed a lot since Sting inadvertently became part of ecommerce history. And in the age of Generative AI, this change will only continue to accelerate.

So what can we predict for the future? Two things are clear.

Businesses need to invest in their customers. The challenging economic landscape we’re in right now won’t last forever. But loyal customers might.

And to spark loyalty, you need to meet – and even exceed – customer expectations. The businesses who take a unified approach to commerce, centralising data under one single platform, are able to meet customers anywhere and everywhere.

Over 30 years, the emergence of ecommerce has split retail into distinct channels. But the borders between online and offline are blurring. And as we move into the era of unified commerce, these barriers will disappear entirely.