In-Store Technology

Amazon.com's cashier-free grocery store of the future is coming to San Francisco and Chicago. The company is expanding its experimental Amazon Go store to the two cities, but didn't say when they would open. It has posted job listings for store managers in the cities on its site, which were first noticed by the Seattle…

The soaring popularity of online-based retail among consumers cannot be denied, but physical retail will continue to represent the majority of sales. In fact, recent research found that physical retail will still account for 80 percent of sales globally by 2025 — an indicator that consumers still see huge value in visiting brick-and-mortar stores. However,…

For decades, the most successful retailers thrived by employing in-store associates to provide shoppers with excellent customer service, advice and individualized attention. In the digital age, however, consumers prefer much less human interaction. They're instead looking to various in-store technologies for help, advice, product and price information, and convenience. To better understand what drives shoppers…

The benefits of online shopping are obvious: its speed, ease and convenience drove Q2 2017 e-commerce sales to $111.5 billion, a 16.2 percent increase year-over-year. Still, if given a choice, 64 percent of online shoppers prefer buying from physical outlets — a number that, surprisingly, increases when talking about younger shoppers. Millennials and even Gen…

Sometimes you can measure innovation by how quickly a capability or service goes from being “cutting edge” to “low-hanging fruit.” That certainly seems to be the case among retailers for the in-store mobile experience — something made clear in DMI’s latest Mobile Maturity Model (M3) study. Not too long ago retailers might have satisfied themselves…

The retail industry has a major impact on the U.S. economy. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), one in four American jobs are supported by the retail industry. Despite the retail industry’s prominent position in the economy, traditional brick-and-mortal retailers are under a pressure unlike any other industry to digitally transform their businesses. With…

A reliable internet connection is every retailer’s lifeline. When network downtime occurs, it costs retailers more than just missed sales, as retailers rely on fast and stable internet to operate point-of-sale systems, security systems, inventory databases, digital signage and more. To better understand the true impact of downtime for retailers, Accelerated Concepts, a Digi International…

In episode 137 of Total Retail Talks, recorded at this year's NRF Big Show in New York City, Hampton Catlin, vice president of engineering at Rent the Runway, discusses how the fashion brand that provides designer dresses, apparel and accessories for rental is using in-store kiosks to expedite the pickup and drop-off of orders. Catlin…

Today, retailers with a heavy brick-and-mortar presence are hard-pressed to deliver on several fronts as the industry grapples with the best strategy for incorporating and optimizing digital best practices into physical store environments. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the search for more effective ways to collect and use in-store data more intelligently. Through…

Technology is having a profound effect on the retail industry. Technologies such as the web, cloud, mobile devices and artificial intelligence (AI) are accelerating the evolution and transformation of this long-standing, multitrillion dollar industry. One obvious example is that consumers today have far more options for shopping than ever before, including from the comfort of…