M&S has said it is “excited” about the store navigation possibilities offered by List & Go, its brand new augmented reality (AR) shopping app which is currently available to use in Westfield, White City as part of a trial roll-out.
The high street giant has seen its fortunes turn around over the last 12 months, partly due to its ongoing efforts in creating a seamless omnichannel shopping experience, giving customers the freedom to shop the way they want to.
For many of today’s customers this means shopping digitally. M&S has launched a wave of new initiatives to help them do this, alongside growing its digital loyalty programme Sparks to over 14m members, one of the largest active online customer bases in the UK.
List & Go is M&S’ latest launch under its dedicated 10x digital stores programme, which sees the high street giant trialling all new launches across five test stores (Kew, Harrogate, Epsom, Cribbs and White City). The AR app launched to customers at White City store earlier this week and is the first of its kind across the UK.
Read more: WATCH: M&S unveils new AR shopping app
“The aim of the trial is to generate detailed feedback on the experience of navigating our stores for customers, ensuring our fantastic product ranges are always displayed at their best and easy to find,” an M&S spokesperson explained.
“We’re really excited to hear what our customers think. As we do with all the trials running across our 10x digital stores, we take a ‘test and learn’ approach – so we will review the results before making a decision on what comes next.”
If successful, the next step is likely to be expanding the trial to M&S’ other digital stores.
“Over the last 18 months we’ve seen an increased customer use of digital, interactive shopping – whether that’s payment methods or QR code-based solutions in-store,” added M&S’ group property, store development and IT director, Sacha Berendji.
“During this time we’ve launched a wave of new initiatives to make shopping at M&S quicker and easier for customers,” she continued. “Through our 10x digital stores programme, we test and learn the latest technologies and innovations that can improve our customer experience – and that’s what our augmented reality ‘List & Go’ shopping proposition is all about.
“We’re excited to be launching this trial at M&S in Westfield White City this week and are excited to hear our customers’ feedback.”
Previous 10x trials which have been successful include video-powered retail (where customers connect with in-store colleagues through M&S.com), barcode scanner (QR code scanning to locate the nearest available product) and Digital Click & Collect (where customers process their own collections or returns using self-serve screens).
