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PARIS 2024: accelerating the growth of a fast-changing customer experience

We can now witness the retail industry being ushered into a new era. After years of competing against each other, brick and mortar shops and online shops seem to have formulated an alliance to unlock their full growth potential. Thus, business offerings are reinventing themselves with the focus of delivering a refreshingly new customer experience during the Olympic Games.

This dynamic trend provides the backdrop to a world-class event which is a true catalyst for change: the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

 

The 2024 Summer Olympics: what are the business opportunities?

According to estimates from the CDES (Centre de Droit et d’Économie du Sport), Paris 2024 is predicted to generate an estimated economic inflow valued at between 5.3 and 10.7 billion euro. For this mega event, 12 million tickets need to be sold while 247 000 additional jobs should be created. The event will also showcase France as a prime tourist hotspot, consequently leading to a boost in business, with more visitors flooding the retail shops.

In addition to the predicted economic benefits, the event is unmissable for international brands. The worldwide scope of the Olympics makes this more than a common multisporting event for brands: the Games provides a great potential for exposure, and a boost to brands that want to capitalize on this advantage. In fact, the strong and worldwide mediatization will generate an influx of visitors, and brands will have the opportunity to directly contact their audience.

How to prepare for the Olympic Games?

As the foremost tourist destination in the world, France has an unshakable foothold in being able to welcome such a massive audience. Meanwhile, the Olympics compels the country to go upmarket and redesign customer experience from end to end, across all industries. Several large-scale modernization programs have been launched, such as the Grand Paris Development Program which should be set up successfully before D-Day. Urban renovation is also scheduled for cities like Saint-Denis, where the famous Stade de France is located. This city will welcome an Olympic village capable of accommodating 17 000 people, which will be later converted into 2 200 new homes. The area will be structured around a revamped downtown where historical retailers and newcomers, those attracted by the location, will coexist side by side.

In turn, shops, public venues and sport facilities will have to initiate their transformation, and phygitalization serves as an asset to help them be prepared to meet the 2024 deadline. Online and offline retailers who were once antagonists, have ceased their bickering so as to thrive in a changing economy, and contribute towards designing a customer experience that is unique and unified.

The different protagonists are aware of how important this challenge is. There is a need to be prepared to welcome the world and reap the benefits of this attractive event over the long run. As a result of online and offline commerce combining their efforts, the customer experience in 2024 will be shaped by a unified customer journey where online behavioral data will be processed and analyzed. This will provide insights on how to go beyond mass marketing, binding proximity, one-to-one relationships with visitors, and deploying a communication strategy before, during and after their stay in France. Tools such as Wi-Fi proximity marketing are already available and have unquestioningly proven to be able to tackle such a challenge, as they help brands engage better and more with their audience.

 

Proximity marketing is an enabler of these next-generation relationships, which customers are constantly on the lookout for. Yet, proximity marketing requires some gestation time. The setup of a Wi-Fi authentication portal, as well as the audit and implementation of the appropriate solution must be carefully planned well in advance, so that the strategy can be executed in due time. To achieve their optimum goals, all stakeholders should be in readiness for this project and invest, right from today, in what will be the key to its success.