Digital Convenience in Physical Stores

Retail trade is investing in new technologies to attract consumers, adapting to changes in their understanding of convenience at each stage of the customer journey. The integration of online and offline sales leads to the development of omnichannel commerce, including implementing digital technologies in the physical space or the so-called phygital retailing. Providing digital convenience in the physical stores is part of adaptive omnichannel retailing. It offers flexibility to phygital consumers, who don’t draw a distinction between the physical and digital worlds to shop online, offline or via mobile apps, anytime and anywhere. The purpose of the article is to explore the investment in the construction and alteration of buildings, machinery, and equipment in retail in Bulgaria compared to EU and to explain phygital retailing – creating digital convenience in physical retailing as a part of metamarketing. A theoretical and descriptive statistical analysis was applied. The data from Eurostat, the National Statistical Institute in Bulgaria, and Euromonitor cover the period between the financial and economic crises in 2007 and the crisis in the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 till 2022.