By Rich Kaminski
For a few years now, the popular wisdom among brands and retailers is to prioritize speed and convenience for shoppers. We’ve been optimizing for easy navigation whether shoppers are visiting stores in person or shopping via apps and websites. More and more retailers are offering quick (and even quicker) delivery — same-day, two-hour, next-day — or pickups in-store, curbside, drive-thru.
“Seamless, frictionless integration and experiences” is the order of the day. Depending on the hour, the day, the job to be done, shoppers want this. They also want the in-store experience to be faster, or at least more efficient: to quickly find what they’re looking for and get in and out without feeling lost, confused or (in the worst scenarios) taken advantage of by the places they shop.
But hand in hand with that, we also see that shoppers want experiences when they’re shopping. Gen Z and Alpha enjoy shopping in-store because it gives them things to do with friends and opportunities to socialize in ways that are still important to young people. Millennials enjoy pop-up stores for specific brands and events, as viral headlines and TikTok reveal, with lines snaking around city blocks. As much as shoppers want to feel like their shopping experiences are quick and easy, they’re willing to invest time in those experiences as well to add novelty and emotional connection to their lives. The major difference, however, is that these shoppers are making the choice on their own to face these hurdles. These long lines and little inconveniences don’t feel artificially added in by brands and retailers or designed to force shoppers to invest more time and effort than they want to. People are choosing to take on the extra work and effort because they personally feel it is worth it.
Lines for the hot new item and cool new experience aren’t new, but we’re seeing this mindset extend to other spaces as well. “Frictionmaxxing” is a trend where young people are attempting to push back against the seamless, frictionless mindset that many feel has spread into too many aspects of their lives. It’s showing up as young people continue to sustain the sales of physical media (think vinyls) and express interest in CDs, cassettes, and wonder why they can’t buy DVDs of the shows and movies they love. People are joining in-person clubs and events and wondering what hobbies they can adopt. Backrooms and Obsession, two smaller budget horror movies that didn’t rely on major IP, were big wins at the box office and encouraged people to get back into movie theaters. Many influencers are talking about health, wellness and optimization with more positive language focusing on enjoying the act of growth and self-improvement. And, yes, even standing in line became a new way to socialize and throw some friction into your routine.
This doesn’t mean that phones, apps and technology are being abandoned by generations en masse. We’ve been reading articles that we’re on the cusp of “peak dumb phone” or “peak digital camera” every summer for the past four or five years now, after all. But the need to find a balance between convenience and the pleasure of friction is continuing to show itself in people’s everyday lives. In order to stay relevant, brands and retailers need to uncover ways to strike this balance between making everyday shopping convenient and easy, so shoppers trust you enough to bring you their business — plus add the right amount of friction that enhances and inspires their life — when they have the time, and when they choose. It’s an artful balance. But it’s the shopper journey.
Rich Kaminski is the research director at WSL Strategic Retail.
