Yahoo Finance Klarna Elevates the Online Shopping Journey Through Virtual Shopping
While consumers continue to shop online at great volume, in-store shopping remains the dominant channel — which, according to Klarna’s Shopping Pulse Report, is largely due to social interaction and a higher level of customer service.
Now, having pinpointed the need for these interactions to provide consumers with more confidence in online shopping, Klarna is making moves to place human interaction at the center of the consumer’s shopping journey.
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Through its new feature, Virtual Shopping from Klarna, the company will enable consumers to browse and buy online more confidently by providing a direct connection with experts in physical stores via live video and messaging. According to the company, the new feature allows retailers to provide a highly personalized and immersive experience that it contends will ultimately lead to increased customer engagement, reduce returns and drive loyalty.
Through the merchant-facing Klarna store app, in-store teams can use the feature to share videos of items and even demo products live. Via text and chat, users can offer consumers personalized recommendations, schedule in-store appointments and stay in touch for future needs. Once enabled with the virtual shopping feature, the company says merchants can “gain insights into shopper interactions and sales, enabling them to improve overall performance.”
Notably, Virtual Shopping from Klarna is already live with more than 300 brands including Levi’s, Hugo Boss and Herman Miller.
“At Klarna, we want to provide the world’s best shopping experience whether that is online or in-store,” said David Sandström, chief marketing officer at Klarna. “In the past, online shopping has been missing a key element: human interaction. With Virtual Shopping, we replicate the brick-and-mortar experience of receiving personalized advice from an in-store expert and bring it to the online realm. This will empower our partnered retailers around the world to bring their online stores to life and build customer relationships that last.”
Klarna’s Virtual Shopping offering is now available to its more than 400,000 retailers across 18 markets including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, France, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Sweden. The company has plans to offer the feature in additional markets later this year.
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