Aligning Retail Tech Innovation With Evolving Pet Care Trends
William Hewish, Chairperson And Cio, Pets At Home
William Hewish, Chairperson And Cio, Pets At Home
What are some of the evolving pet care trends that you are noticing in the retail space?
Nearly 60 per cent of people in the UK own pets, and during the pandemic, the number reached an unprecedented high, with pet ownership still increasing today. We have seen a new, younger generation of pet owners emerge during the pandemic who prioritise pet welfare and closely align their pet care decisions with their own beliefs. As a result, we are seeing strong growth in areas like our advanced nutrition pet food, and we anticipate the pet care market remaining resilient despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions ahead.
Many of these new customers also want the ability to shop when they want and how they want, and we are finding that our omnichannel approach is proving to be the right strategy. We recently launched a same-day delivery service, which works well given our extensive network of over 450 stores. Rather than relying so heavily on central distribution centres, we are using technology to fulfil orders directly from the stores closest to our customers, and getting items to them within hours.
We are also trying to align with the evolving economic outlook of our customers. We understand the pressures many of our customers are feeling due to rising inflation and increased cost of living, and so we are committed to remaining competitive on price so that this never becomes a reason not to shop with us. For example, our private label food brands are typically 25-30% cheaper than the branded equivalent, which allows customers to trade down on price whilst maintaining the quality of their pets’ diet.
Were you a part of any initiatives to enhance the e-commerce experience for pet owners?
Some recent initiatives I’ve been involved in are digitalising our store estate and reimagining the digital experience for our customers on both our app and our website. We’ve been running a programme called ACE (Advanced Colleague Experience), which enables our in-store colleagues to leverage technology to simplify tasks, while also delivering a better customer experience.
We have seen a new, younger generation of pet owners emerge during the pandemic who prioritise pet welfare and closely align their pet care decisions with their own beliefs
ACE is refreshing the technology across our stores, fostering the creation of apps that benefit both customers and employees. To keep the initiative in alignment with customer needs, the development team actively takes feedback from employees, and based on this feedback, they redevelop, redeploy, and rework the apps until they are working most effectively
After successfully launching an app in one store, it is easy to deploy the technology to the other stores, so it is rolled out across our estate. Having these technological tools helps connect Pets at Home colleagues across stores, enabling them to share knowledge and expertise seamlessly.
Our newly created roles of Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO) are responsible for gathering relevant information from different sources, which fuel the analytics-powered digital tools I described above. The data scientists in our team play a crucial role in drawing relevant insights from our data. These insights then enable us to give customers the right tools to make decisions about pet nutrition, products, and more
.Apart from ACE, our 20-million-pound digital transformation project, Polestar, is focused on building a new and integrated customer-oriented website, as well as enhancing all our digital customer journeys.
Both these initiatives, led by our in-house development teams, help us develop and customise our own tools according to our requirements and eliminate the need for us to rely on off-the-shelf solutions.
What advice would you give to the senior leaders or CIOs in the retail space for the implementation of innovative technologies?
My first piece of advice would be to get as close to your customers as possible, so you can understand their needs and expectations. At Pets at Home, we send our developers directly into stores. This means they can experience market trends first-hand, allowing them to align new products with our customers’ needs. I truly believe that getting out of your comfort zone can give a better outcome than the traditional way of trying to create products and technology in a 'closed lab.'
As for my second piece of advice, CIOs must realise that consumer habits change in alignment with the economic outlook. For instance, AI and machine learning are fast gaining traction when personalising products for customers. Incorporating such technology trends will undoubtedly augment brand value in customers' minds.
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