Born out of people’s need for faster services and less wait time, High Speed Retail is all about making the customer’s shopping experience go by much quicker. Examples of High Speed Retail can include drive-thru grocery stores, pop-up stores, mobile businesses such as food trucks, or any retailer that implements urgent promotions or limited-time sales.
The use of mobile POS systems is extremely common in High Speed Retail. This trend is because aside from being fast, lightweight and easy to set up, mPOS solutions run in the cloud and can update every aspect of the business (inventory, CRM, payments, etc.) in real-time, thus helping merchants stay up-to-date at all times. Most mPOS systems also come with convenient capabilities such as emailing receipts and processing mobile payments, making it easy for High Speed Retailers to conduct business much faster. (1)
High Speed Retail reflects our hectic lives
‘24-hour banking, who’s got time for that?’ Like most good jokes this one, from US comedian Steve Wright, is close to the truth. People are leading increasingly hectic lives. Back in 1900 people slept for 9.0 hours every night. Now it’s just 6.9 hours. This is driving trends like drive-by dining, mobile banking and it’s also killing giant malls, which take too much time to shop. Equally, people are getting increasingly bored with the same brands in the same places, which in turn is driving ‘pop-up’ retail and ‘limited time only’ products and offers. (2)
References
- High Speed Retail, http://whatisdictionary.com/high-speed-retail/#.Vfi0sRHBzRY
- Top Trends in Retail, shopping & leisure, http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends§orId=6
