Ikea Roblox, Walmart Drones & AI Update, Pretty Little Thing Charging for Returns

[00:00:04] You're listening to Retail Disrupted, a podcast that explores the latest industry developments and the trends that will shape how we shop in the future. I'm your host, Natalie Berg. Hello and welcome back to Retail Disrupted. We're going to be doing something a little different on today's episode.

[00:00:36] Now for the past six months, I've been almost entirely focused on bringing you interviews with retail CEOs and other leaders in the industry. I have loved this and I have learned so much from my guests. That's not going to change.

[00:00:51] We're going to keep doing that and I actually have some awesome guests lined up for the second half of the year. But as many of you know, I also like to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening

[00:01:01] in the industry and help you to unpack the wider implications. So I'm very excited to share that I've teamed up with the globalist from a medical radio to cover the so-what behind today's biggest retail stories. I will be sharing these conversations with you right here on this podcast.

[00:01:21] And so for our first episode, I'm bringing you my discussion with Georgina Godwin earlier this week. This is the globalist episode 3352, which you can download and listen to and full from MonicalSight. That's monical.com. I've also included that link for you in the show notes.

[00:01:39] So without further ado, let's dive in. It's time now to retail with Natalie Berg who's a retail un-list and author and a strategist and joins me now. Natalie very excited about this first story. It's IKEA and their virtual store, which people can get paid to work in.

[00:02:02] Tell us more. Yeah, it's a really interesting story. So IKEA is launching a virtual store on the gaming platform Roblox. Now that in itself is pretty innovative and it follows similar moves by retailers like Walmart, Gucci, Nike, H&M.

[00:02:18] There's a whole host of retailers that have been experimenting with Roblox in varying forms. And I think a lot of retailers today are recognizing that there's this huge untapped opportunity to make online shopping a little bit more fun, a little bit more engaging, and a whole lot

[00:02:34] more immersive. So that is very much the direction to travel within retail. But the IKEA story is really interesting because they're going to be hiring real-life staff to work in this virtual store, becoming the first brand to offer paid work on Roblox.

[00:02:49] So how this will work is they're looking to hire 10 people across the UK and Ireland. It does feel a little bit like Willy Wonka and winning a golden ticket because there's only 10 rules. If you don't get hired, you can still work there for free.

[00:03:03] So really interesting what they're doing here. But the role itself will be to interact with customers online, to help them choose their furniture, to inspire them with virtual showrooms and even according to IKEA to serve up digital meatballs.

[00:03:19] So it's a really interesting story but very real implications here around the future of e-commerce and also how shopping is evolving for the next generation. Well I was seeing that in Walmart too because they have done a big take update. They have.

[00:03:36] Now Walmart is still the largest retailer in the world and it knows that if it wants to retain that title, it's got to keep innovating, got to keep adapting for this digital era. So they've just announced their latest round of tech updates and there's a lot to unpack

[00:03:53] but essentially I thought there were three highlights that are worth calling out. The first is around the drone wars. So drone delivery is something that Walmart began testing a few years ago. It's grown very rapidly in that time.

[00:04:08] Now it is limited geographically because there's still a ton of regulatory hurdles here but they have completed over 30,000 drone deliveries to date and they're expanding this and allowing customers to actually select drone delivery within the app now.

[00:04:25] So really this is just about normalizing this idea of getting stuff delivered by drones and also at the same time making it more seamless for the customer. The second thing is around in-home delivery.

[00:04:36] Now this is also quite interesting so how it works is a customer place is a grocery order online. They don't need to be at home when the delivery happens. So if they're feeling, you know, if they feel comfortable enough to do this what happens

[00:04:50] is a Walmart associate is given a one time access code to enter their home so they need some kind of smart lock. They then will put your groceries away, they'll put them in your fridge or on your

[00:05:00] counter or wherever you ask and it's all very seamless and convenient. Now some people might find it a little creepy rather than convenient but- I have a day no effort. How did I know where the serial lives for instance? Well I just leave a few posts.

[00:05:16] But at the point was that they are expanding this to an additional 10 million households across the US. They're really interesting to see all this innovation around delivery and the final mile and they just very briefly the final update was the beta launch of a generative AI

[00:05:29] powered shopping assistant and I know that's a little bit of a mouthful but I think we need to get used to hearing more about these AI assistance because this is the future and more and more retailers are going to be launching these types of initiatives to help

[00:05:44] drive efficiencies but also to improve the customer experience. So what would a shopping and AI powered shopping assistant actually do? Yeah that's a great question. So as I always think this is a good example if you're going to a kids birthday party

[00:06:00] and you need to buy a gift instead of what we do now is we will go online and just search for a specific product or a specific category like toys or games or books or whatever it is that you're looking for.

[00:06:11] But instead you can just ask your AI assistant well what's the ideal present for a five year old or a nine year old and then what it'll do is it'll surface a number of recommendations and then you get to find two of those recommendations but it's very

[00:06:24] interactive it's very conversational and what we're actually said that we're moving from scroll searching to goal searching so it's this idea that you can browse based on specific use cases and it just I think we're just going to see a lot more of this in the future.

[00:06:41] Yeah and that of course stops a ton of returns let's talk more about returns because there's a big kind of backlash against having to pay for them one firm in particular just started charging and people are not happy.

[00:06:54] That's right but I think that the days of free returns are coming to an end so pretty little thing has become the latest fashion brand to start charging for returns UK shoppers will now have to pay a £1.99 fee which is deducted from the refund as you say shoppers

[00:07:13] are not happy with this change they're saying that if sizing was more consistent well then they wouldn't have to order an item and three sizes and then return too which I mean let's face it that's how we all shop these days that's how we've been trained

[00:07:27] to shop I should say and I do think that retailers have created a monster with free delivery and free returns and now they're desperately trying to find a way to put that that

[00:07:38] Jeannie back in the bottles so really interesting to see you know it's not an easy move as was as are it was actually the first retailer to kind of kickstart this trend a few

[00:07:48] years ago but more and more high street retailers are recognizing the need to stamp out this buy to try mentality it's not good for their bottom line and it's also not good for the planet. Natalie thank you very much indeed that's Natalie Bergver.

[00:08:08] Thank you for listening to retail disrupted the interview you just heard originally aired on the globalist from monical radio episode 3352 with Georgina Godwin. If you enjoyed this episode of retail disrupted and would like to support the podcast you can leave a rating on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.