Technology

Interacting with voice assistants is becoming a part of our daily lives. From smartphones and smart TVs to wearables and even microwaves, it’s hard to name a device that hasn’t been — or won’t soon be — enhanced with voice-enabled technology in some capacity. Despite its growth, voice assistant technology is a largely untapped resource.…

As part of Total Retail's recently released 2019 Retail Technology Report, we surveyed retail executives on a variety of technology-related topics, including the processes within their organizations for investing in new technology. We wanted to know, among other things, how long the buying process takes, on average; how many service providers they're considering for a…

Expert speakers will address topics such as why sales tax compliance is critical to keeping customers happy and much more.

The consumer products and retail industry has undergone an evolution from mall to mail over the past decade. Brick-and-mortar retailers have aggressively sought out ways to remain competitive against the rising popularity of online shopping. E-commerce outlets are able to take advantage of a variety of tools to tag a consumer’s purchase history and autonomously…

Customer experience is quickly becoming the brand differentiator, and there’s no customer experience game-changer potentially bigger than artificial intelligence (AI). In a recent market analysis from UBS, retail ranked among the top industries predicted to be most impacted by AI. It's easy to see why. While online giants like Amazon.com and online disruptors such as…

No retailer deliberately sets out to complicate the lives and shopping experiences of its customers. In fact, headlines point to ways the industry is doing the opposite, adding convenient fulfillment options or altering store formats to accommodate quicker in-and-out trips. However, if as many as 17 percent of items in a category are duplicative in…

When asked what are the top challenges when implementing a new technology into their business, 70 percent of retailers said integrating it with existing technology. That's just one of the key takeaways from Total Retail’s 2019 Retail Technology Report, which was produced in conjunction with Arm Treasure Data, an enterprise customer data platform. In this year's second…

The age of digital disruption has arguably impacted retailers more than any other industry, with well-known brands going out of business or closing stores on a regular basis and consumers increasingly choosing online shopping over brick-and-mortar because of convenience. With pressure to stay competitive, when an outage of any kind (point-of-sale system, inventory management, etc.)…

Brick-and-mortar retail is getting dissed by millennials, who increasingly prefer to shop online. With millennials representing an estimated $1.4 trillion in purchasing power, brick-and-mortar retailers can’t afford to ignore their needs as e-commerce and subscription services eat into market share. In the words of Vanilla Ice, retailers need to “stop, collaborate and listen,” brick-and-mortar retail…

With the growth of voice search and the media buzz surrounding it, it can be a challenge to separate the truth from the hype. All of the biggest brands have a hand in the market, and they all want you to use their voice search service, be it Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Bixby, or Google Assistant.…