In-Store Technology

The optics on the health of the retail industry have been gloomy for some time now, with one old-school brand after another biting the dust on a regular basis, according to major headlines. More often than not, the blame lands on online brands and big-box giants like Amazon.com or Walmart, which are relatively easy targets…

PUMA opened the doors to its first-ever North American flagship store recently, located on Fifth Avenue in New York City. With a focus on cutting-edge technology and innovative products, the store showcases an immersive PUMA brand space. The flagship store offers consumers a unique shopping experience through innovative sports engagement zones, a customization studio, and…

Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company launched a new pop-up store at the Mall of America last month, a large investment in its retail practice. The store, Modern Retail Collective, features products from Elevé Cosmetics, Kendra Scott, ThirdLove and type:A Deodorant. “The purpose of the store is to provide retailers a real, flexible environment — a learning…

In today’s modern world, connectivity is key. This is true for most facets of everyday life — how we communicate, how we travel, even how we shop. Consumers expect their physical experiences to be highly connected, with technology serving as a life raft for any troublesome or inconvenient situations they encounter. But despite their elevated…

RSR has been conducting an annual benchmark on the state of the store since the company launched in 2007. It’s one area where we always hope to see change from the previous year’s respondents. After all, many of us have grown disillusioned with how little the shopping experience has changed in the physical world. As…

The implementation of in-store retail technologies is lagging far behind consumer expectations surrounding these new tools, according to a new A.T. Kearney report. The survey on which the report was based polled 1,000 people from various demographic and economic backgrounds about emerging retail technologies used in physical stores, and focused on five crucial technologies: augmented reality;…

Foot Locker is teaming with Nike as it rolls out bigger, more interactive stores. These so-called Power stores are four times as big as a typical Foot Locker store in malls. The newest will open Saturday in New York — in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The retailer plans to open upwards of 50 Power stores over…

In this week’s Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss the challenge brick-and-mortar retailers face in getting customers to come back to their stores to shop again. Specifically, they analyze a recent article published on myTotalRetail.com, The 4 Reasons Shoppers Don’t Come Back to Stores, which was authored by Tom Buiocchi, president…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss the top trends driving experiential retail, as written in a recent article published on Total Retail by author Martin Kurpiel, senior vice president of technology solutions and IT at Valid. They focus on how experiential retail could impact businesses’ brick-and-mortar strategies going…

With the growing preference for online shopping, combined with customers who can instantly compare prices and reviews with their smartphones, the expectations and needs of the brick-and-mortar shopper are rapidly evolving. As a result, physical retailers have been in a race to deploy new technologies to provide a better experience in the hopes of keeping…