Can the pure play model survive?

Home delivery is not the Holy Grail of retail as was once thought, says Neil Ashworth, retail & technology leader, and former CEO of Collect+.

“Retailers must provide functionality to customers at their point of need. While it is true that traditional stores need a digital offering, the death of the High Street has been hugely overstated. The day of ‘average’ retail is dead but the High Street is regenerating. Stores will be important because the economics of delivery are hard.”

Ashworth made the comments at the inaugural BT Field Engineering Forum, held at the iconic BT Tower on June 19. 

He echoed comments made by public speaker Scott Galloway who turned much received wisdom on its head saying ‘Amazon cannot survive as a pure-play retailer'.

He added: 'Stores are the new black in the world of eCommerce. We have discovered these incredibly robust flexible warehouses called ‘stores.’’

Ashworth said that Next day delivery volumes had overtaken 2 day deliveries over last 18 months in the UK.

“This is driven by the trend of greater individualism in modern society, as documented by Adam Curtis in The Century of the Self, and it shows little sign of slowing down.

“Perceptive delivery is the next phase, with the weight of data carriers and retailers have, they can paint an accurate picture of your lifestyle. The opportunity is there to improve customer satisfaction while improving cost, and GDPR is the challenge. The danger is the customer will be underserved because companies fear being in breach in GDPR.”

He also highlighted some emerging technologies such as vcode – a next generation barcode – which links the physical world to a purchase or any form of information and acts as a secure identifier. He also highlighted Locpin, a GPS-enabled map application that enables customers to easily share their location to help with the delivery process. Precise, it can highlight any address worldwide as a 2m sq block.