New research from Voicebot.ai reports that nearly one in five adults in the U.S. already has access to a smart speaker (e.g., Alexa, Google Home), although they might not necessarily have their own. This equates to roughly 47.3 million people, or 20 percent of the U.S. adult population. Considering that Amazon.com didnโt release its Echo speaker untilโฆ
1966. That's the year the first โchatterboxโ appeared. Fifty-two years later, chatbots are on the verge of completely changing the customer/retail shopping experience. Like site search in the 2000s, many of these emerging customer touchpoints are being automated using a combination of simple keywords and rules-based logic. On one hand, these messaging bots can streamlineโฆ
There's lots of buzz surrounding digital-native brands and what's making them so disruptive and relevant today. While the definition of digital native is evolving, they are companies that launch as web-only retailers with the belief that superior technology can be a differentiator. They often engender loyalty by projecting authenticity and effectively leveraging social media. Moreโฆ
Steve Jobs thrived at balancing the complexity that drives powerful computational systems with the simplicity required for utility. โSimple can be harder than complex,โ Jobs said. โYou have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But itโs worth it in the end because once you get there, you can moveโฆ
As has been written about ad nauseam in this e-newsletter and countless others retail trade publications, personalization is the Holy Grail for retailers. After all, done right, personalization elevates consumersโ lives and promotes engagement by providing products and/or content that tune into and even anticipate the needs of customers. The benefits of personalization to the customerโฆ
Each day, the world seems bigger, more diverse and moves much faster. Predicting the future โ always a dubious proposition โ seems like a foolโs errand in this climate, given the dizzying pace of disruption. But as Peter Drucker once said, โThe best way to predict the future is to create it.โ For retailers, thatโฆ
I was excited to interview Tom Ebling last week, a true retail technology leader whose stint as CEO of Demandware from 2010-2016 included growing the software company into a $300 million public company that was acquired by Salesforce for $2.8 billion in 2016. Prior to Demandware, Ebling was the CEO of Lattice Engines, ProfitLogic andโฆ
Supposedly, Tori Spelling once said, โbad shopping habits die hard.โ The "Beverly Hills 90210" actress was probably talking about her own shopping habits, but in a larger sense, Spelling, who helped personify consumerism in the 1990s, when the mall was king and Amazon.com was merely another dot-com, pretty much nailed todayโs retail business, where bad habitsโฆ
The future is now. This thought went through my head several times this week at Shop.org in Los Angeles, especially when I was sampling some of the virtual reality (VR) immersive experiences that were on display on the trade show floor. The VR experiences I've demoed in the past have been proof of concepts designedโฆ
Have you ever heard of XRC Labs, the innovation accelerator for the retail and consumer goods industries? If not, you may want to get to know it. It's doing some pretty interesting things with retail technology. Each year, XRC Labs runs two 14-week programs designed for startups in the retail technology space. XRC Labs providesโฆ