Why is Decathlon bullish on self checkout strategy? 🛒📱
Recently, I walked into a Decathlon store & was asked to download their app.
Welcome to the 93rd edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
The only sane thing to do post Diwali was to get back on my fitness regime, I mean, at least plan and buy for it. So I did what anyone would do - headed to a nearby Decathlon store, the brigade road one in Bengaluru.
As I wanted to check out, a nice gentleman walked towards me and suggestedalmost forcedto download Decathlon’s app for a quick easy checkout.
Quick context 😎
Post covid, Decathlon introduced Scan & Go. Customers can simply scan and pay for items using their smartphone, automatically disabling the RFID security tag to leave them free to exit the store without any need to queue or wait at the checkout.
This meant escape from checkout counters ✨
No long check-out queues, no waiting time & yes - introvert shopper friendly. You no more be forced to stand in queue for 30 minutes if you bought just one T-shirt.
So how does this work? 🛠
Decathlon put geo-tagging to a godly use. When a user opened the app, the brand used the store location to track their location, users scanned the product & payed and the same sale was logged in the said store’s ledger, moving to the last leg where the security guard scanned the QR code generated post purchase to tally the sale. Boom! You’re out of the store.
But, there’s more to this story 🤔
The scan & go isn’t just solving faster checkout, it’s also solving a larger cross selling problem Decathlon has. If you pay attention - how many times do you really buy Decathlon in a year? Is it every few weeks, months or once a year? That’s the core problem Decathlon, and every D2C brand, faces.
With the Scan and Go feature, Decathlon now has access to user behaviour, store exploration patterns & importantly it opens a channel for Decathlon another marketing channel with the user. Plus, the scan and go hook is really adding value to store experiences and hence users won’t mind much if it’s allowing them to skip a really long queue.
So, what can you implement on your product? 📝
Think about this - what are some of the friction points in your product that users hate, for Decathlon it was the checkout counter, for your product it might be something else. Decathlon created an arbitrage between long wait times vs quick app download. The natural selection took care of adoption to the app. Think of what is this arbitrage for your product.
That’s all for now 💙
Sometimes solving for the problem could open up new avenues for you to cross sell your own products. Especially, if your users value speed & time.
Struggle at solving friction points in your product? 🤓
Be it at onboarding, retention, repeat purchase rates, we go in depth in the science of solving these growth problems at GrowthX. You should jump in if this is a priority for you in this quarter. Trust me, there is only upside at GX fam.
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