Retail shopping has transformed significantly in recent years. With the rise of e-commerce platforms, brick-and-mortar stores have been struggling to keep up with the changing landscape. In Australia, this trend is no different. Higher prices, combined with a backlash against new technologies in physical stores, have resulted in a growing distrust among customers towards traditional retail.
Increasingly retailers face the challenge of balancing customers’ desire for heightened digital offerings and in-store conveniences with wariness around issues like data security and usage and the increasing digitalisation of interactions.
Amidst this growing distrust however, researchers at QUT, led by the Cisco Chair in Trusted Retail, Dr Ostern introduce a new concept – Omni-trust. This approach allows customers to choose their preferred form of engagement, such as identification via ID, loyalty card, or even hard-biometrics like palm or face recognition. By giving customers the power to choose how they want to engage, Omni-trust aims to build trust and improve the overall retail experience for customers. This concept also takes into account individual trust assessments.
“What one customer might consider a trustworthy form of engagement may not be the same for another and retailers need to be cognisant of the need to adapt to consumers’ varying comfort levels. Further, self-related trust concerns also play a part; some customers feel uncertain about their own ability to engage with new technologies in the retail environment, so retailers need to find ways to help navigate them through the process,” said Dr Ostern.
The new Omni-Trust: The Role of Choice in Building Trust in Retail whitepaper, launched today, explores how retailers can best balance tech-enabled new interactivity with customers’ comfort levels. The omni-trust framework offers four distinct strategies to boost consumer trust and enable retailers to build customer-led engagement and confidence.
Figure: The Omni-trust Framework
The framework offers four distinct strategies to boost consumer trust and enable retailers to build customer-led engagement and confidence
Download the white paper
The white paper is freely downloadable via QUT ePrints at https://eprints.qut.edu.au/244710
You can also download the one-page factsheet
The Omni-Trust whitepaper is the second in a series of trust-experience (TX) themed research projects produced through CFE’s TRUST EXPERIENCE Thought Leadership Series. The first was the launch of The Benevolent Enterprise whitepaper. The research forms part of a $3M partnership with Cisco which aims to leverage technology for new customer experiences and economic resilience in retail, venue, and logistics sectors.
