The basic retail experience hasn’t changed much over the years: go into a store, look for the right product and make a purchase. Artificial intelligence has the potential to completely transform the traditional retail experience and take it to the next level with personalization, automation and increased efficiency. And it’s already happening.

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Companies from Nordstrom to J. Crew have invested in loyalty programs. Some removed barriers, others added them, but the changes all said something about the strategy. In the past year, the space was reshaped when a slew of retailers reinvented, upgraded and dropped loyalty programs. The multi-retailer Plenti program shut down in July after Macy's and several other important participants bailed. And several retailers have tweaked or added internal loyalty programs. Program changes have ranged from department stores, including Macy's, Nordstrom and Kohl's, to big-box and specialty retailers like Target, DSW and Lululemon. While some of the changes are likely just the result of natural investment in that part of the business, retailers also face pressure from higher shopper expectations.

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These days in brick-and-mortar retail circles, it seems all anyone can talk about is experiential retail. Immersive, interactive, technology-enhanced — these are all adjectives that get tossed around when executives are talking about what the store of the future needs to look and feel like. What does experiential retail really mean? For some it may be a swimming pool full of sprinkles or meditation pods. As design becomes a more intentional factor of the store experience, it's changing consumer expectations, especially for younger generations. As Doug Stephens, CEO of Retail Prophet, recently put it, "Millennials don’t suffer from shortened attention spans. Rather, they simply have a much higher sensitivity to things that are boring." But in reality, how many stores are actually as experiential as these out-of-the-box ideas? In a country with roughly 22.5 square feet of retail space per capita (more than any other country), the answer is: not many.

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“Trust has become the connective tissue between brands and loyalty. Expectations for trust are up across all product, service categories, and brands an average of 250+% year over year. Meanwhile, customer concerns regarding privacy, security, and brand transparency have reached a tipping point. Today, loyalty is a fusion of emotional engagement, trust, and an ability for a brand to engage; to meet or exceed expectations consumers hold for their Ideal product or service. The brands on top of this year’s category lists know that, and more importantly, they know how.”

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As retail went digital and consumers began shopping online more, retailers and brands raced to integrate fancy in-store technology and apps, as well as onboard back-end systems to support the omnichannel experience. But the question remained – how to evolve in-store associates to leverage the continuous rise of technology in the retail industry. This is mission-critical now that connected consumers enter the store armed with more information than the associates. At the same time, evidence supports the need for store associates. As retailers and brands look to keep pace with industry evolution, they must begin to integrate the front of the store with the back.

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With every Facebook like, Amazon browse, Instagram post, or Google Maps query, we’re being watched, monitored and targeted. The internet has become a surveillance state and each of us a data set, where companies — known and unknown to us — are cataloguing, monetising and leveraging our data, often in ways to which we didn’t (at least knowingly) consent. The bottom line is we’re being tracked online, and to a large extent, we’ve come to accept it as the price we pay for a wide range of digital services. Today this same degree of surveillance is coming to the real world, as brick-and-mortar retailers attempt to fight back against online rivals who use their data supremacy to consistently outpace the growth of their offline competitors.

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Digital transformation matters enormously. Digital giants such as Amazon, who are overtaking rivals in multiple industries (retail, supply chain/logistics, media, etcetera), are succeeding through a business model designed to take advantage of the most advanced technologies to continue to change and disrupt their industry. It is driven by the rise of the Internet of Things, which is forecast to have a trillion things connected to the Internet by 2050. At a macro level, marketing continues to be transformed by data and technology in significant ways. Marketers now have the ability to more accurately target and engage customers and have an array of new tools and technologies at their disposal. The classic right message to the right audience at the right time idea is now driven by data and delivered with sophisticated technology.

INFORMATION AGE | Read More →

Buy online, pick-up in store is often heralded as the future of retail: Customers shopping on their own terms, as efficiently as possible. But it might end up being a bigger lift than expected for retail stores. Large retailers like Target, Walmart, Kroger and Home Depot are using store pickup to cut delivery costs, encourage customer interaction with associates, and drive in-store sales growth. Using stores to fulfill online orders lets retailers add supply chain muscle to their e-commerce businesses. But it does come with risks. As demand grows for in-store pickup, in-store fulfillment could put pressure on traditional store operations.

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Wounded from the so-called retail apocalypse that defined 2017, some of the nation's most established brands have been faced with the fact that they either have to adapt or die. As a result, many have been forced to take lessons from trendy young startups that have swooped in and redefined the way we shop. From Gucci and Balenciaga to Crocs and Glossier, these are some of the most explosively successful brands of 2018.

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Here’s how former big-box stores transform into seasonal Halloween pop-ups. Despite the brick-and-mortar retail apocalypse taking place across the country, Halloween pop-ups like Spirit have endured. When traditional retailers file for bankruptcy and leave empty big-box stores in their wake, they also give Halloween retailers more potential locations to choose from. Shockingly, even the rise of online shopping can’t seem to kill the Halloween store. All of this would be impossible without the existence of vacant retail properties in need of tenants, even if those tenants only plan on being there for a few weeks. What’s bad for retail is good for Halloween pop-ups, at least to a point. These companies need vacant spaces to fill, but they also need nearby stores to draw in consumers.

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