Consumption patterns: a constantly changing landscape

We have known for some time that digital transformation is forcing companies to evolve their product distribution processes. Customer demand for an increasingly high-quality and fast customer experience is reshaping traditional business logic, leading to the emergence of more and more tools designed to meet these new expectations.

In recent years, consumer choices have been strongly influenced by digital devices; the use of smartphones and the development of Web 2.0 have fueled the expectation that brands will be able to offer exactly what consumers want at the precise moment they are looking for it.

The dynamics generated by the pandemic events of recent years have reinforced this trend, transforming it into a purchasing habit. Consumers want access to an infinite catalog of products and expect ever faster deliveries. 
At the peak of the pandemic, quick commerce, which allows consumers to order a product online and receive it at home in less than an hour, gained so much momentum that it created new standards of immediacy for customers.

Catalogues are interconnected and multiplied across countless platforms: social media, company websites, marketplaces.

But today, this expectation no longer applies only to digital purchases: physical stores can also offer a very similar service.

This is the concept of endless aisles, which involves the use of solutions that allow customers to browse or order virtually a wide range of products that are out of stock or no longer available in a given location, and which are then shipped to the store itself or directly to the customer's home.

Thanks to these solutions, brands can welcome their customers into small spaces, guaranteeing them the widest possible range with a borderless catalog, capable of retrieving the entire existing product availability.

It is immediately clear how complex it is for companies dealing with product shortages and supply chains with critical issues in the production phase and sourcing management to fulfill customer desires.

Expectations have not only increased in terms of the selection process, which must be as frictionless as possible. The other major issue is defined by a new KPI that has emerged recently: speed of sending. This measures the responsiveness with which a company is able to process an order and deliver it to the courier so that it reaches its destination.

This is a metric that companies are required to respond to and which, in the near future, will increasingly represent an element of customer evaluation of retailers.

Another fact that should not be overlooked is the importance of handling the product with care in logistics, paying attention to its delicate and unique characteristics. Product handling, which is often neglected, represents one of the elements with the greatest added value.

This is especially true in the fashion world, where respect for the shape of the garment worn, or respect for the packaging of products such as accessories, footwear, etc., makes a big difference in terms of quality: it allows luxury products to reach the consumer exactly as they were designed by the designer.

These issues are driving a rethinking not only of business models, but also of structures, processes, and possible automations to be implemented in logistics.

All this is accompanied by urgent environmental issues, which require attention to waste and the adoption of a comprehensive vision of sustainability, and which seem almost irreconcilable with what consumers have become accustomed to in terms of service.