Consumers Would Rather Wash Dishes Than Purchase In-Store

There are many consumers who still love making an in-store purchase. But more than ever before, a significant number of consumers say they see it as a chore. In fact, they’d swap the brick-and-mortar experience for — this may surprise you — washing dishes. All because that in-store experience has lost in the convenience game to online shopping.

That’s according to the Capgemini Digital Transformation Institute’s new report, “Making the Digital Connection: Why Physical Retail Stores Need a Reboot.” More than 6,000 consumers and 500 retail executives were surveyed from nine countries, including the U.S, and the report found that the “shoppers are now seeing less value and pleasure in this core element of the physical retail experience.”

According to the report, 40 percent of consumer respondents said they see shopping as a frustrating activity, even calling it a chore.

But perhaps more interesting is the chasm between retail executives and consumers. While 81 percent of those executives say the brick-and-mortar store is important, only 45 percent of consumers share the sentiment.

Even more so, consumers not only have high expectations for retailers, but other studies say consumers are holding retailers to a higher standard than in past years. The Capgemini study said shoppers are frustrated with the in-store experience because, overall, it’s failed to keep pace in terms of efficiency and convenience in the way that the online experience has. Other annoyances that consumers said they have with the in-store experience include waiting in lines at checkout (66 percent), extraneous promotions (65 percent) and just not being able to find the item that they came into the store for to begin with (65 percent).

“A key reason for this declining value is that consumers now expect a physical user experience that replicates what they find online, from expecting goods to be in stock to being able to choose from multiple delivery options,” explained the report. “Consumers wish to use technology to help them engage with the store at every step of the shopping journey.”

Customers who responded to the survey also said that they expect same-day delivery of products ordered in-store (73 percent), as well as in-store social spaces and experiences, like cooking classes (57 percent), and loyalty programs (68 percent).

As a result, consumers said they are choosing to buy directly from manufacturers (57 percent) and buying those items through mobile devices connected to retail platforms, like Google, Apple and Facebook (59 percent), especially if there are delivery perks.

That said, more than half of the executives (nearly 55 percent) will admit that they haven’t been as quick to make their physical stores more digitally enhanced and equipped. They also added that making that digitization a reality is a priority (78 percent), but less than a fifth have already done it.