15 Feb Digital Bottlenecking

If Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and other big retailers had a vision for the future of shopping, it would be an industry based solely on mobile pay-and-go services. However, since the industry is not fully committed to mobile shopping just yet, big retail companies are facing the challenges of accommodating both increasing footprint and digital demands.

For instance, Starbucks, who has been very successful in mobile pay-and-go services, has recently learned that their frequent mobile-based orders are overwhelming in-store operations. More specially, more than one in four U.S. based Starbucks orders are placed by a mobile device causing mobile lines to grow longer and creating more and more impatient customers.

Therefore, Starbucks is actively trying to solve the digital bottlenecking phenomenon with new text messaging features and voice-activated orders in an effort to try to eliminate chaos, cluster, and confusion. “We’re actively working to address the congestion in our highest volume stores at peak,” Maggie Jantzen, a Starbucks spokeswoman stated. “This includes introducing new in store procedures and tools, adding new roles and resources to specifically support Mobile Order & Pay, and testing of new digital enhancements”. Ironically, the term “digital enhancements” wouldn’t have even been a watchword used when discussing a solution to a retail problem, but the retail industry is changing rapidly with computerization and new technology.

Although too much product demand is a good problem for a retailer to have, it certainly comes with its stresses. The fleeting growth in mobile pay-and-go services will basically lead retailers to re-think store layout, employee talent, and mass delivery. Stores will evolutionary shift to delivery top versus countertop, employee training will focus more on order-fulfillment versus point-of-sale, and stock inventory will change dramatically from in-store to outgoing.

We are witnessing first-hand how the dinosauric ways of marketing and media are swiftly changing. We saw it over the holidays with the increase in online shopping, we see it changing the way we communicate everyday, and we recognize soon digital will be at the center of it all.