Harvey Norman in Millennial Walk in Singapore yesterday became the first store in the world to pilot a new retail solution called Microsoft Synchronized Shopping, which aims to help consumers make informed purchase decisions amid the myriad options online and offline.
The solution forms part of Microsoft’s broader retail reimagined strategy aimed at simplifying the consumer journey by leveraging intelligent cloud technology.
“Enabling great customer experiences is at the heart of our retail reimagined initiative, and this new intelligent edge solution is designed to break customer choice paralysis by providing a seamless online and in-store experience,” said Ami Silverman, corporate vice president, worldwide sales, consumer & device sales division, Microsoft.
Silverman said Microsoft Synchronized Shopping is first of many innovative solutions that Microsoft and its partners will bring to market to transform the retail journey.
Microsoft Synchronized Shopping was developed in partnership with Microsoft Gold partner Popcornapps, and is built on highly scalable Azure cloud services, progressive web-apps (PWA) and geo-location based services.
The PWA is designed to work with multiple form factors across iOS and Android devices and interacts with the devices in-store using a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) application.
Dealing with “choice paralysis
With the online proliferation of options and the anywhere/anytime nature of shopping via mobile devices, two issues plague the customer journey for consumer electronic purchasers today.
First, shoppers (80% of whom start their journey online) end up delaying or even postponing a purchase because they are overwhelmed by the number of choices. Second, they find it difficult to choose the product that best meets their needs, without conducting extensive research, and often end up buying a less-than-satisfactory device. This “choice paralysis” inspired the design of Microsoft Synchronized Shopping.
“Customers must be able to make decisions holistically, especially in a digitally connected world. This has always guided how we curate our assortment of offerings, and it now shapes how we look at connecting online and offline channels seamlessly for our customers. Synchronized Shopping is a major step in the right direction to help all of us live this ‘connected life’. I am excited to see the results of this pilot run and we will continue to improve on and expand this experience.” said Katie Page, chief executive officer of Harvey Norman.
Seamless online-offline purchase journey
With the Microsoft Synchronized Shopping solution, shoppers use a customised conversational A.I. driven product advisor, on the Harvey Norman website, that asks a series of questions to identify their needs, then recommends devices that best meet those specific needs such as long battery life or storage capacity.
Product advisor results reflect devices that are on display in Harvey Norman, where customers can go to try them out. The immersive and engaging experience starts when the shortlisted device(s) on the website creates a shopper pass on the mobile device with embedded geo-location services. When shoppers are in proximity of the store where the specific PCs are available, they get a phone notification, and once they enter the store are guided to the exact PCs that were recommended by the online advisor.
This simplifies the in-store experience, eliminating the need for shoppers to spend time navigating through all the choices in the PC aisle. In addition, it provides a seamless online-offline purchase journey tailored to their needs which is highly secure (and with no footprint of the user on any of the interacting devices).
