During COVID-19, Singaporean retailers adapted well to the constraints imposed by the pandemic, ramping up investment to improve their operations and integrate digital technologies. These investments bore fruit, with 68% of 500+ Singaporean businesses surveyed by Adyen and KPMG indicating seeing their revenue grow by 20% or more in 2021.
These figures were shared in the Adyen Retail Report 2022, a report that presents findings of a 2022 global survey of 10,000 businesses and 40,000 consumers to learn about their concerns, aspirations, strategies, and investments for 2022 and beyond, and understand how they feel about the state of retail.
The study found that digital transformation played in pivotal role in not only helping keep Singaporean retailers afloat in the face of the uncertainty brought by COVID-19, but also allow businesses to perform better than prior to the pandemic.
Of the 500+ Singaporean retailers surveyed, 56% said they were in a better position due to the investments made during COVID-19 to improve operations during the pandemic.
More than one in four businesses indicated having connected payment systems to other parts of the organization, such as inventory management and supply chain, and of these, 70% said their business grew by 20% or more in 2021.
Singapore and Malaysia emerge as front-runners in back-end connectivity
Across Asia-Pacific, Singapore and Malaysia were found to be the two front-runners when it comes to breaking down silos with payment systems.
Compared to global and regional counterparts, more businesses in Singapore (27%) and Malaysia (28%) had connected their payment systems to other parts of their operations during the time the survey was conducted, against 23% in Hong Kong, 24% across APAC and 21% across the world.
As a result of investments made during the pandemic, Singapore’s businesses were found to be much more optimistic about the year ahead. 77% of Singaporean businesses indicated expecting to grow by 20% or more in 2022, exceeding the global average of 72% and APAC average of 70%.
These promising results are enticing businesses to continue investing moving forward. Despite eased COVID-19 restrictions, an overwhelming 97% of businesses in Singapore shared plans to invest more over the next year, more than the APAC (93%) and global average (94%).
Leveraging data and technology to improve customer experience
The study also identified a rise in payments data usage by retailers as they seek to gain customer insights and enhance shopping experience.
Of the Singaporean retailers polled, 32% indicated using payments data to understand user behavior and improve customer experience, and 30% to build a better picture of their customers.
Other popular use cases included identifying popular product line and product development (29%), helping with inventory (26%) and improving decision making in other areas of the business.
Rising usage of data comes on the back of changing customer expectations.
As consumer touchpoints online increase, Singaporean consumers showed some of the highest standards when it comes to online experiences, with 40% of the 1,000+ respondents surveyed admitting that their expectations of online experiences increased during the pandemic.
Reflective of that, a staggering 74% stated that they were more likely to shop with retailers that use technology to improve the shopping experience, and 73% said they would not shop with a retailer if they priorly had a bad experience with them, either online or in store.
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