James Barlow, VP sales, UK and Ireland at Akeneo looks at the key trends for the coming year that will be instrumental in shaping product information (PIM) and product experience (PXM) strategies
A number of trends, already observable, will develop in 2024 in ways that will enable brands and retailers to offer a personalised service to both B2B and B2C customers as standard, regardless of channel, device or shopping journey type.
2024 will see a continuation of the convergence of B2B and B2C. In B2B, the buyer expects a similar experience to what they are used to in B2C, so brands and retailers will need to shift their focus to everything that supports the sale and having the right PIM and PXM tools will be key to that.
Specifically, buyers will expect to be able to serve themselves rather than having to interact with brand representatives. This will be a spur to technologies that have been talked about for some time, including Augmented Reality (AR), virtual showrooms and visual product configurations.
These innovations, which now need to accelerate, will give rise to new terms including B2B consumerisation and B2B Digital Commerce. IDC has coined the phrase Transcendent Commerce to reflect the fact that operational B2B and B2C lines are becoming blurred causing commerce operational models to merge. In turn, developers will have to increase automation and centralise their tech stack to achieve this, as well as keep pace with regulation and data privacy.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominated conversations in 2023 but 2024 will see it emerge as an essential business tool as software providers race to embed generative AI (GenAI) features into their products and find new ways to help businesses do more, faster and with much less human effort.
GenAI will feature strongly in analytics for predictive insights, which will in turn enable improved operational capabilities in inventory management, replenishment and supply chain all the way to customer-facing solutions, referred to as contextual augmentation, which is all about personalisation. This latter development will then lead to more complex use cases such as complex narratives and multi-modal GenAI. What this will mean for consumers is they will continue to embrace self-service because GenAI will make online experiences more engaging.
Returns will continue to be a problem in 2024 but brands will take advantage of new ways to manage and mitigate them, notably, making it increasingly harder for buyers to return items online, highlighting the sustainability issues with current return models. At the same time, they are encouraging buyers to pick up online orders in-store, which has the advantage of driving foot traffic and enables retailers to offer enhanced in-store shopping experiences with incentives.
2024 will see an acceleration in the development of digital passports, which record for sharing all data about a product and its supply chain, as part of the European Green Deal, which aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
There will also be development in Digital Product Passports (DPP), which aim to gather data on a product and its supply chain, and share it across entire value chains so all actors, manufacturers, repairers, and consumers better understand the environmental impact of the materials and products they use.
Under the legislation, information like a unique identifier, material data, sustainability, and repair data will have to be shared, in addition to the basic but still mandatory product name, product model, manufacturing place and date, and warranty details.
The advice is to work with a PIM specialist that can create a scalable source of truth for all product information, backed by omnichannel product experience (PX) solutions to ensure the information reaches the right audiences, at the right time, in the right place with tailored information.
While the many channels that consumers use to browse and buy are not yet indivisible, that is the direction of travel, with physical becoming more digital and vice versa. Phygital retail is becoming a given and 2024 will show just how true that has become, given the business imperatives of customer satisfaction, loyalty, increased sales and fewer returns.
Phygital retail depends on immersive experiences and convenient transactions, both of which depend in turn on being able to access multiple product attributes that can be assembled instantly to provide a personalised service, unique not just to the customer but to the circumstances of the purchase, the location and other preferred options such as fulfilment.
While the consumer continues to struggle with the impact of high inflation and lower disposable income, their thirst for buying experiences that are memorable, rewarding and convenient will be as strong as ever, placing additional pressure on retailers and brands to develop solutions that meet these needs, using tools that do not strain their human resources or budgets.
