Charged by the digital transformation and “on-demand” standards, businesses started to progressively implement “as a service” strategies and operations: rethinking processes to make them more customer-centric, providing technical support or troubleshooting services, customer loyalty programs, etc. XaaS (everything as a service) has developed into something a lot more complicated in time, with its mindset and way of functioning on the market.

Originating in this concept, Retail as a Service is essentially a dynamic cloud-based commerce platform that gets input from various touch-points and helps brands understand how their products work and how their audiences tick.  With dedicated accounts on the platform, companies gain control of the consumer and transaction data to understand, build, and scale customer experiences that facilitate business success.

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“With RaaS, retailers can more easily target efforts to create disruptive, impactful experiences versus commoditized commerce functions that don’t differentiate or deliver value.”

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Take the RaaS concept, put it together with stationary retail, and there you have your experience power-house: backed by technology, driven by product discovery, regulated by customer feedback, inspired by people and communities. With RaaS, stores move away from being solely sales instruments towards service points and media channels.

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"46% of shoppers prefer to buy in a physical location, while 50% choose to buy a first-time product through a retailer."

Shopper-First Retailing Report

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Retail as a Service reinterprets the function and the scope of the physical store: from lifeless, over-crowded spaces to platforms where brands learn about their audience and can be active members of communities, living and breathing their values and aesthetic credos.

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Moreover, RaaS makes retail a lot more fluid. Customers can quickly move back and forth between physical and digital services and environments; brands can join or exit Raas solutions as they need, scale up or down as they see fit. Architects and retail designers can build timeless and sustainable spaces; Experts can design more relevant experiences that make shopping less mindless and more mindful, creating moments of “serendipity and unexpected interpersonal connections."

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"75% of customers expect companies to use new technologies to create better experiences."

State of the Connected CustomerReport, 3rd Edition

We are unquestionably living in the age of stories and hype. We see RaaS as the epitome of the retail hype - almost everything you can imagine, from experience, trial, experimentation, exciting branding, bold product launches to unexpected partnerships, can be done.

But the hype is not enough, and it won’t bring meaning and sustainable success - this is why RaaS needs to work on expertise.

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Everything we’ve learned about retail, we've learned by experimenting with technology and new tools, taking risks, pushing our creative limits and those of the brands we work with. We learned by doing retail transformation.

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Download our full guide on Retail as a Service and check our blog for more upcoming insights. Contact us at hello@pioneers.agency and schedule a meeting with our team to learn more about what we're planning.