Macy’s deficiencies to make checking out at its stores less of a hassle.
The company will pitching out a mobile checkout option, powered by its mobile app, to all full-line Macy’s stocks by the end of 2018, CEO Jeff Gennette said Sunday at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas.
The party is also adding an augmented reality shopping experience for furniture to the Macy’s app, hitting phones as cocks-crow as next month for some shoppers. With the upgrade, customers last wishes as be able to virtually place Macy’s furniture within their own red-hot spaces, seeing how it looks there before they buy.
“It’s the most competitive [retail] situation we’ve ever seen,” Gennette said at ShopTalk. “Macy’s heritage isn’t successful to be enough to guarantee success.”
Macy’s has been testing the mobile checkout recourse at its store in Woodbridge, New Jersey. The platform allows shoppers to scan bar ciphers on items (apparel, home goods, etc.) with their phones, as they add merchandise to their baskets in have faiths. Relevant discounts and rewards will also be applied, via a shopper’s allegiance account, throughout.
When customers are finished shopping, they last will and testament head to a special counter for mobile checkout, where an associate see fit remove security tags and make sure the number of items scanned supplements up to those paid for. Then, they’re ready to go.
At a recent conference with investors, Gennette noticed checking out the “single biggest pain point” in stores today. “Being skilful to turn that control [of checking out] over to customers is a big win,” he said.
Macy’s pass on also soon start piloting mobile checkout at its Bloomingdale’s unearthing in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, with plans to grow the platform to this domain store brand at a later date.
Also on Sunday, Macy’s confirmed the expansion of a successful virtual reality pilot for furniture to 60 warehouses by this fall. It had been testing the VR technology at three locations, in New York, New Jersey and Florida.
The new trappings shopping experience will allow shoppers to move items encircling a virtual room (a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, etc.) via a tablet in stores. It on cover a “significant portion of Macy’s largest furniture departments,” the enterprise said. Once the room is designed, shoppers will be able to “degree into the room and walk around,” using a VR headset.
The goal is to put out new technology to shoppers, who are acclimating to using VR and AR gadgets at a more rapid rook. Retailers including Ikea, Wayfair, Target and Lowe’s have also chose updates to their apps or added in-store platforms for shoppers to visualize furniture within their own homes.
“Like a lot of brands, we’ve experimented with VR in a include of areas and we’re excited to have found a practical application that has show to drive sales,” Gennette said about the expansion plans.
The companionship has said that during the VR pilot test, shoppers returned tiny than 1 percent of furniture purchases, compared with 5 percent of those elements being returned on average.
Macy’s meanwhile is in the midst of a turnaround of its job with the goal of getting back to same-store sales growth. That system includes building out its off-price concept, Backstage, leasing out space within shops to other profitable uses, rethinking the layout of its beauty department (supplementing more Bluemercury stores), and revamping its loyalty program to add a tender-neutral opportunity, meaning shoppers don’t need to use the Macy’s credit card to earn awards.
Gennette said Sunday that Macy’s is also planning to redesign its website later this year.