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What Does the Future Look Like for the Consumer Experience?

What Does the Future Look Like for the Consumer Experience?

Fujitsu / February 18, 2022

Customer experience is an increasingly vital focus for organizations across many sectors, from retail and financial services to government and public sector. Customers and citizens are no longer willing to accept slow, inefficient, or frustrating digital experiences.

To support our customers in delivering outstanding experiences, Fujitsu recently identified ‘Consumer Experience’ as a key area within our new business focus, Fujitsu Uvance.

To explain what this means in practice for our customers, we talked with Hirohisa Yamaguchi, Head of the Finance & Retail Solution Business Group at Fujitsu, who shared how Fujitsu aims to deliver a diverse and rich ‘Consumer Experience‘.（Based on Fujitsu ActivateNow2021 Key Focus Area Session）

Major change of consumer behavior in 2030 and innovation that retailers should work on

By 2030, millennials (born in the 1980s and 1990s) and Gen Z (born in the 2000s) will dominate purchasing demographics, and we anticipate the following things to change.

First, methods of consumption. We expect a radical shift in conventional values of buying and owning products. Instead, intangibles will make up the majority consumption. People’s values will also become increasingly diverse. The result of this shift is that there will be less demand for today’s status brands. And a rising awareness of consumption of tangible and intangible items in line with consumers own values.

What’s more, rising awareness of social contribution, with the SDGs as a background factor, will greatly increase the desire for ethical products.

Increasing concern for social issues is particularly important. Both Millennials and Gen Z are both very tuned in to the protection of the global environment, the circular economy needed to achieve this, and to the ethical behavior of companies.

Decarbonization, reduction of food waste losses, providing a stimulus for local communities and corporate initiatives that contribute to solving social problems will become extremely important. This means consumer desire to buy goods and services from companies engaging in ethical behavior is certain to rise.

Therefore, companies must take action on social issues. This has the potential to exceed the conventional scope of corporate social responsibility to become a driver for corporate competitiveness.

To adapt to these changes in consumer values, retailers must constantly race to keep up. We think of the required innovation to do this as follows.

The first keyword is “data-driven.”

It is necessary as a platform for making high-precision decisions based on various data such as social networking services and big data, and both to swiftly optimize supply and demand.

Next is Digital twin. This is indispensable to a seamless shopping experience linking the real world and online, through the implementation of a service platform.

For adapting to diversified values, Personal Recommendations is necessary to make recommendations to match personal taste and preference and implementation of databasing and AI etc are required to achieve this.

It is essential for companies to work on Carbon neutral decarbonization from the perspective of the SDGs. In the retail industry, a system is indispensable for linking decarbonization, origin information, the production environment and shipping status to ensure correct procurement.

At the point of Contribution to “Community”, it is important to decipher local characteristics and implement services tailored to the community.

To do so, a platform for sharing and exchanging value that community is indispensable.

Finally, the full use of IT can automate employees’ work and shift them to added value operations are essential element in order to maximize employee capabilities. How should companies proceed with these innovations?

The 4 key areas of emerging consumer needs

Fujitsu has identified four areas as priority themes in Consumer Experience for these innovations that companies should work on.

Smart Retail

Smart Retail enables businesses to give consumers the ultimate customer experience, opening up points of contact with them in a world that blurs the lines between online and offline.

Smart Supply Chain

Smart Supply Chain enables businesses to achieve supply chain reform aimed at optimizing the value chain in order to become sustainable, safe, and trusted.

Smart Enterprise

Smart Enterprise enables companies to modernize their back-office for data-driven management on an integrated management platform with the theme of “from dedicated system to standardized system.”

Smart Platform

Smart Platform enables companies to aggregate consumers’ values and provide value to companies and to society using this information.

Fujitsu has developed our consumer experience offerings to support these four areas and create added value for our customers.

For example, Smart Retail allows retailers to integrate not only customer purchase history and stock data, but also visualizations of customer behavior at stores. This holistic integration greatly increases the retailer’s ability to forecast demand and accurately order the right stock volumes – increasing efficiency and creating value.

What’s more, this seamless, data-driven approach reduces workload on employees, allowing them to shift to higher value tasks and spending more time with their customers – building relationships that only humans can do.

In addition, the sophistication of demand forecasting reduces waste, directly supporting a more socially responsible and sustainable retail model.

The Future is not to predict, but to create

As these major changes in consumer behavior develop, Fujitsu is here to support our customers with innovation focused on seamless digital experience.

We don’t just want to create technology to help predict the future. We believe technology developed together with our customers and society is a vital enabler to help build a happier future where people can live more prosperously.

The challenge of Fujitsu’s Consumer Experience has already begun.