The future of mobile payments is the future of retail, and retailers who embrace mobile payment and integrate it with their marketing strategies will gain a competitive advantage within the digitized retail industry.
Emerging technologies are taking retail by storm with mobile payment options. Mobile payment has completely changed consumers' shopping experience.
Owning customer data and the whole customer journey is a profitable endeavor. Some merchants are leveraging their mobile app to attract more traffic to online stores, boosting online sales performance, launching new channels to the customer, and optimizing after-sales service.
In light of all these benefits, mobile payment solutions enable retailers to add value to their customers from comprehensive online services and experience.
Some early adopters of mobile payments have used their advantage to test the market and earn early wins. Tianhong, or Rainbow, is one of the most notable.
Rainbow is a Shenzhen-based chain with over 70 stores across China. It is more innovative than other traditional retailers and has invested significantly in technology and procuring imported products to boost its appeal among younger consumers. Rainbow's omnichannel retail is more comprehensive than other ones we have seen.
Rainbow has created a new shopping experience for customers in recent years around innovative retailing, quality consumption, enjoyable experiences and attentive service. It offers three main functions: scan and pay, on-demand delivery, and online shopping including routing customers from its mobile app to WeChat's online store. As of the end of 2020, Rainbow boasted over 300 million digital members.
What exactly has Rainbow done since its online-to-offline (O2O) mobile app's launch to pull in and retain that astronomical number of customers? Rainbow is doing countless things right to maintain this colossal level of success.
When a customer opens Rainbow's app, they can easily order at a nearby shop so their orders are waiting for them when they get home. And to top it all off, Rainbow managed to own the entire brand experience.
Secondly, the Rainbow app has digitized its members, products, services and marketing.
Lastly, and most critically, Rainbow can own all of its customer data. Despite its app, Rainbow's partnership with WeChat is a successful digital transformation for offline supermarkets’ response to increasing competition from online rivals. The app will convert app consumers to follow their WeChat official account for the latest updates and discounts. The retailer embedded customized message notification, seamless membership system, and one-to-one real-time interactions to enhance engagement and personalization efforts.
The majority of the supermarket's marketing functions and shopping scenarios have been digitized. By partnering with WeChat, Rainbow has achieved double-digit growth in member spending throughout the year by targeting customers' history spending data with one-to-one precision push.
They can aggregate and act on their customer data. No more data silos or digging is necessary to understand what their customers like and how to give them more of it.
