Andrew Busby asks whether the current retail offer of convenience and service is sustainable or are consumers asking for too much?

Click and collect, home delivery, wifi, personalisation, RFID, tablets, ever lower prices, condensed lead times…the list goes on but all these are what are now expected by consumers.

Shoppers have got used to high quality, low priced food, they’ve got used to buying a pair of jeans for £10, used to being able to order by 10pm and have the item delivered to the location of our choice the next day. Service levels are ever increasing but consumers expect prices to stay low. The question is whether this model sustainable for the retailers?

The news that Bank was the first casualty of 2015 may have come as little surprise and the fact remains that each January we see some retail names going to the wall in the aftermath of peak trading.

This year pressure was even heavier, with the increasing popularity amongst consumers of the so called Black Friday, an unwanted US phenomenon which artificially creates demand and places huge pressures on retailers.

Such was the impact in 2014 that Andy Street, boss of retail bellwether John Lewis, was moved to say “we’ve got to ask if it’s right to concentrate trade so much in that one period” and “my personal hope is that this is the high water mark for Black Friday. I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle but do we need to stoke that fire anymore? I personally hope not”.

If such excessive consumer expectations are beginning to worry the likes of John Lewis, what impact must all this be having on the smaller retailers?

Are consumers unwittingly creating a landscape where collective expectations are placing an unsustainable burden on retailers such that it will ultimately drive them out of business? Because at the moment it seems that the one differentiator a retail brand has left up its sleeve is customer experience, but are shoppers expecting too much?

Grocers struggle to make much money out of home delivery, so why do they provide the service?

Click & collect is currently the darling of many consumers. What could be better? Well, quite a lot actually.

Horror stories from a number of retailers abound of how they failed their customers in the run up to Christmas. Delivering Christmas fayre on the 26th OK? Sorry – we’ll let you have a voucher with our apologies.

On the one hand this is simply not good enough but on the other it is a sign of a creaking supply chain which simply cannot keep up with the ever increasing demands consumers are placing on retailers.

Maybe it’s time to take stock and ask where the real value lies. What is it shoppers really want from retailers.

Is it low prices? Is it 24/7 availability? Is it a great experience? One thing’s for sure; if consumers want it all, it will come at a price. The question is - are shoppers ready to pay that price?

  • Andrew Busby is retail business head at Zensar Retail