Retail technology is changing at breakneck speed. To remain ahead of the competition and improve their businesses, retailers must keep abreast with the latest developments and implement new solutions accordingly. Let’s look at three emerging retail technology trends and why the solutions they bring to the table are gaining ground in the marketplace.
1. Tablets take segment by storm – Powerful computing capabilities and relatively low price points are making tablets an appealing retail technology option for retailers that seek:
– Powerful, highly effective customer service and line-busting tools: Retailers can utilize special tablet-based software applications to provide shoppers with more product information than they will ever find on websites. They can also leverage this type of retail technology to process payments on the sale floor instead of forcing customers to wait in long lines. Additionally, tablet applications can be integrated with stores’ inventory management solutions, granting associates access to customers’ loyalty program information and other data that may be used to aid in suggestive selling.
2. Kiosks kick it up a notch – Kiosks are becoming a popular form of retail technology because they:
– Improve the shopping experience, in turn bolstering customer loyalty: Instead of waiting for assistance, shoppers can use kiosks to obtain detailed information about stores’ products and services, including product features, prices, price comparisons and SKU-level availability.
– Enable retailers to cultivate more customers and sell more merchandise: without investing in additional brick-and-mortar space or incurring additional labor expenditures. To attain this goal, kiosks can be used to showcase items that are not available in-store, but may be ordered right from the unit or online.
– Accomplish other tasks more efficiently and cost-effectively: Such tasks include accepting job applications, processing credit applications, managing gift registries, and selling gift cards.
3. RFID returns – RFID has had a few false starts in the retail technology arena, but is now coming on strong. Emerging retail applications for RFID encompass:
– Item-level tagging: Affixing RFID tags to individual items and taking inventory “snapshots” as often as once each day paves the way for retailers to bolster the bottom line and ensure that they have the right merchandise in the right stores, at the right time, without worrying about overstocks. Declining RFID reader and tag prices, coupled with solutions providers’ ability to configure hybrid systems that feature handheld and fixed-unit tag reading capabilities alike, are fueling the item-level RFID tagging fire.
– Enhancing customer engagement: Here, store associates use readers to scan RFID tags on merchandise in order to access and share with customers a variety of product information. In the most cutting-edge applications, data retrieved by scanning RFID tags is transmitted to stores’ servers, which in turn can push it out to any device logged into that equipment.
– Accessing actionable information: By tracking and generating reports on RFID reads, retailers can determine when and how often a given SKU was viewed by customers and whether or not it was subsequently purchased.
While you may be hesitant to make the investment in such retail technology options as tablets, kiosks, and RFID, you must seriously consider adding these solutions to your hardware arsenal. Those retailers that do not take such a forward-thinking stance face the prospect of lost opportunities in an ever-more-competitive market.
