Market Intelligence

Are Your Stores Giving Shoppers What They Want?

Our new survey research reveals where and how Retail Leaders are winning with their store strategies.

In a retail world increasingly defined by digital convenience and e-commerce dominance, brick-and-mortar stores remain crucial both to retailers’ growth and to meet shoppers’ preferences for experiential retail. But while both retailers and shoppers are leaning into physical stores, there is growing acknowledgment that the in-store experience frequently falls short of customer expectations. Our survey conducted by Retail Systems Research (RSR) underscores a critical disconnect: Shoppers are demanding more engaging, intuitive, and tech-enhanced in-store experiences, yet many retailers are falling short of these expectations.

Chief among emerging threats to retailers are online competitors (41%), direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands (38%), and e-commerce platforms offering same-day delivery (28%).

The Store as a Growth Driver

Despite the growing popularity of online shopping, 85% of retailers surveyed in our study said stores remain their primary strategy for growth. For top-performing retailers ­ — those characterized as Retail Winners* — that number climbs to 90%.

While 84% of shopping journeys today begin online, the majority of purchases are completed in-store. This reinforces a fundamental truth: the physical store remains the cornerstone of retail engagement.

However, the appeal of the store hinges on its ability to meet changing customer expectations — a task that many retailers admit they are struggling with. While 75% of retailers believe customers still enjoy browsing stores, 62% acknowledge that consumers now want something different from their in-store experience than what they’ve provided in the past.

* Assuming industry average comparable store/channel sales growth of 7%, for the purposes of our study, “Retail Winners” are categorized as those with sales above 7%.

About Jumpmind

Known for its cloud-native, mobile Point of Sale (POS) platform, Jumpmind offers the most modern and technologically leading POS and unified promotions to support inspired shopping experiences that empower both shoppers and the retail associates who serve them.

While most POS platforms are designed to meet retailers’ current needs, Jumpmind builds a system designed for the future. Business requirements can shift, customer expectations can evolve, and hardware preferences change over time. That’s why Jumpmind solutions — which are built by retail industry veterans — are technology agnostic, adaptable and future-proof, enabling retailers to stay ahead of the curve through agility, at scale.