Guest blog post by David Upton, Director, Peru Consulting

Blame the weather or the continuing surge in online shopping, but generally disappointing post-Christmas reports from the big retail brands in particular show that life on the High Street is never going to be the same. The fact that everyone now wants to buy, sell, browse, plan and research on their mobile phone wherever they are means customer expectations are changing fast.

The concept of showrooming, where consumers use a store to look for goods they want to buy but go ahead and purchase it from the cheapest vendor online there and then on their mobile, is now a reality. How will retailers do the calculations about how much they are paying for real estate versus how much they are selling – is it even possible to do margin calculations on a traditional basis anymore?

One thing retailers can do is harness the power of mobile to their advantage. By linking Wi-Fi in-store to their customer loyalty programmes, they could potentially open up some fantastic new processes, such as on-the-spot offers, dynamic pricing for loyal customers and even ‘beat the price’ offers when people are searching for specific products online.

Research undertaken on behalf of Peru Consulting shows that retail IT directors are keen to address this challenge. More than two thirds either already offer free Wi-Fi or plan to in the near future, demonstrating that the aspiration is clearly there to move forward. The IT directors we surveyed said the biggest benefit from offering free Wi-Fi in-store is the ability to offer dynamic pricing (37 per cent), followed by developing deeper customer insight (30 per cent), keeping up with competitors (29 per cent) and creating a better shopping experience (28 per cent).

A major upgrade of network infrastructure can often be required if retailers are to modernise the customer experience they can offer. However, while almost four in ten IT directors say they replaced their legacy telecoms and network infrastructure to save costs, a third believe that the perceived cost of upgrading is too high. There are also some misconceptions and blockers that remain. One of the main barriers to providing free Wi-Fi tends to be cost, with nearly a fifth saying that it would be too expensive to provide Wi-Fi coverage for customers using their current network infrastructure. What isn’t being measured is the cost of not providing it…

A third have been advised that fibre-based broadband wouldn’t suit their business, while 25 per cent are locked into an inflexible contract with their telecommunications provider and another 25 per cent believe that fibre-based broadband is ‘a consumer based product’. Our own experience shows that these fibre-based services can transform in-store capabilities for a manageable cost.

The High Street has changed significantly and omnichannel shopping is now a reality. But mobile technology will bring even more disruption – and retailers need to think about how to prepare for the new shopping environment before Christmas rolls around once more.