Google case study European retail research 2019 update

Key Challenges

Our Approach

The Results

Google is the world’s most-used search engine and is one of the four top-ranking companies world-wide.

Following from the success of our first European retail research project done with Google, Practicology worked with the company on a second piece of benchmarking research to identify customer experience best practice among the continent's retailers.

In 2019, Practicology evaluated the customer experience delivered by 223 retailers across 10 European countries, namely: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

A scoring methodology for the European retail research was jointly agreed between Practicology and Google, to assess key aspects of the retail experience such as customer service, mobile website usability and store visits.

Retailers were grouped into four categories based on their score: Leaders, Followers, Majority and Latecomers.

During the course of the 136-day long project, Practicology proofed almost 28,000 data points, spent 1,113 minutes on the phone with customer services and walked 308 km during store visits.

Less than 20% of retailers were scored as Leaders, with the UK, France and the Netherlands coming out on top. Spain and Norway had the most amount of Latecomers.

Key criteria, such as the inter-channel shopper journey, in-store technology and a clear click-and-collect proposition, were identified as vital things retailers must do to ensure they deliver a great customer experience.

The information from this European retail research was shared with retailers individually and was also presented at Google events in London and Amsterdam.

These conclusions have also been published on the Think With Google blog.