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Store of the Future Passes First Field Test

09.10.2003

Store of the Future Passes First Field Test

 A broad-based customer survey by The Boston Consulting Group demonstrates that the new technologies are readily accepted by most of the customers. At the Extra Future Store in Rheinberg the METRO Group Future Store Initiative has been testing innovative technologies for tomorrow’s retailing under real conditions since April 2003.

Within the scope of a study, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) analyzed the consumer acceptance of the technical innovations tested in the Extra Future Store in Rheinberg. “The study shows that the customers are highly receptive to retailing innovations like self checkout or the Personal Shopping Assistant. Since the opening of the Extra Future Store in Rheinberg in April 2003, 77 percent of the customers have used the numerous technical innovations at least once”, explains Dr. Gerd Wolfram, Project Manager of the METRO Group Future Store Initiative. “Customers are really enthusiastic about some of the innovations. The study also bears evidence to the fact that the technologies deployed in the store have prompted a higher customer frequency.”

What is especially popular among customers is the Intelligent Scale which automatically recognizes fruit and vegetables and prints out the appropriate price labels. Around two thirds of the customers use it. At any rate, 20 percent of the customers inform themselves regularly about products like wine, meat or baby care at the Information Terminals. An especially gratifying observation: elderly people also make regular use of the new technologies offered. For example, after all 56 percent of the interviewed customers over 60 are using the Intelligent Scale.

Positive Assessment of the Benefit of the Equipment
Up to 90 percent of the respective users rate the benefit of the individual technology offers as “high” to “medium”. What appears to be especially helpful to customers is the Information Terminal “Wine Assistant” which informs about grape types and vine-growing regions. 64 percent of the users testify to a high value. The self checkout system ranks second in the customers’ favor (53%). “It is our goal to advance the innovation process in retailing by offering useful solutions. We can only achieve this in cooperation with the consumers. We are therefore especially pleased that our customers like to use the new technologies”, stresses Wolfram.

Technology is a Differentiating Feature
In Rheinberg, too, the comprehensive goods supply is a decisive incentive for shopping from the viewpoint of the customers. The new and attractive presentation of the merchandise enhances the decision to buy. According to the findings of the study, the technologies applied in the store additionally lead to an increased customer frequency in the Extra Future Store, being at the same time a differentiation characteristic towards competitors. Overall, customer satisfaction has distinctly improved after the revamp of the Extra store: more than half of the customers expressed that they were “highly satisfied” – before the reconstruction 34% gave this rating. The number of customer visits has also increased markedly after the re-opening: by 46 percent.

Increasing Number of Regular Customers
Since the re-opening at the end of April 2003, 30 percent new customers have been registered at the Rheinberg Extra store. At the same time, the share of regular customers increased from 30 to 43 percent. The figures of the BCG study imply that the Extra Future Store is attracting valuable new customers not least thanks to the innovative technologies. What is more, the technology users of the store prove to be important volume buyers: they buy more than those who do not use the technologies and cover 70 percent of the needs at the Extra Future Store (non-users: 56%). The results demonstrate the importance of customer-friendly technologies for the future success of a retailing enterprise.

Sound Basis for Development
Aside from the positive results relating to the use and acceptance of new technologies, the study of the Boston Consulting Group also provides suggestions for optimization. First and foremost, customers ask for an improvement of functionality and user-friendliness of the technologies offered, for example easier scanning with the Personal Shopping Assistants or additional functions at the Information Terminals. “The Extra Future Store is a test laboratory for us where for the first time advanced technologies are interlinked in complex interaction for the retailing of the future. There are of course still areas in which we can improve the technologies to adjust them better to customer requirements”, explains Dr. Gerd Wolfram. According to Wolfram, the experience gained with the customers at the Extra Future Store are an important basis for optimizing the technology solutions. Wolfram: "The entire retailing industry is benefiting from this experiment".

The METRO Group Future Store Initiative
The Extra Future Store is the first project of the METRO Group Future Store Initiative. The objective of the cooperation is to render shopping easier for the customer by applying new technologies while at the same time driving the innovation process in retailing on an international level. Partners of the Initiative are 40 companies from the IT, services and consumer goods industries – among them SAP, Intel and IBM.

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