Retailers have embraced a variety of technologies to engage their customers. This article focuses on “The Future of Retailing” by highlighting five key areas that are moving the field forward: (1) technology and tools to facilitate decision making, (2) visual display and merchandise offer decisions, (3) consumption and engagement, (4) big data collection and usage, and (5) analytics and profitability. We also suggest numerous issues that are deserving of additional inquiry, as well as introduce important areas of emerging applicability: the internet of things, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robots, drones, and driverless vehicles.
#2Paul Farris(UVA: University of Virginia)H-Index: 26
The increase in the variety of channel formats, and the progression from single, to multi-, then to omni-channel marketing has made shopping and buying more convenient for consumers, but trickier to manage for marketers—both upstream suppliers and downstream retailers. The first step in managing multi- and omni-channel distribution is to find the specific metrics that will facilitate reliable analysis of the relationship between distribution and marketing objectives. That is our primary goal in ...
#1Barbara E. Kahn(UPenn: University of Pennsylvania)H-Index: 49
In the future, we expect to see more shopping on-line or on smart phones. This suggests that understanding how visual design decisions can influence consumers’ reactions to online assortments is important. New advances in neuro-marketing techniques, such as sophisticated eye tracking methodology, can help understand exactly what drives consumers’ attention and processing efficiency.
Continual innovation and new technology are critical in helping retailers’ create a sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, shopper-facing technology plays an important role in increasing revenues and decreasing costs. In this article, we briefly discuss some of the salient retail technologies over the recent past as well as technologies that are only beginning to gain traction. Additionally, we present a shopper-centric decision calculus that retailers can use when considering a new s...
Disruptive layouts, smart carts, suggestive signage, GPS alerts, and touch-screen preordering all foreshadow an evolution in how healthy foods will be sold in grocery stores. Although seemingly unrelated, they will all influence sales by altering either how convenient, attractive, or normal (CAN) it is to purchase a healthy target food. A Retail Intervention Matrix shows how a retailer’s actions in these three areas can be redirected to target shoppers based on whether the shoppers are Health Vi...
Last. Hyunseok Song(J. Mack Robinson College of Business)H-Index: 1
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Retailers are dynamic in nature, and their strategies keep evolving with changing scenarios and availability of new technologies. In the current scenario, there is a need for a comprehensive and organizing framework for retailers to develop and implement a complex set of strategies. In this article, we broadly categorize retailers’ implementation of strategies at four levels—market, firm, store and customer. The four-level categorization has been done using a triangulation approach consisting of...
Last. Jens Nordfält(HHS: Stockholm School of Economics)H-Index: 12
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Firms and academics recognize the importance of creating an engaged customer base, though an in-depth understanding of how to achieve it is limited. This article proposes that firms that use consciousness as a foundational philosophy can create a more engaging and meaningful customer experience. A retailer or service provider with foundations in consciousness has a higher purpose and values that get espoused and fulfilled throughout the organization, working in a way to optimize benefits to its ...
Packaging is a critical aspect of the marketing offer, with many implications for the multi-sensory customer experience. It can affect attention, comprehension of value, perception of product functionality, and also consumption, with important consequences for consumer experience and response. Thus, while it was once viewed as being useful only for product preservation and logistics, package design has evolved into a key marketing tool. We introduce the layered-packaging taxonomy that highlights...
Last. Sudhir Voleti(Indian School of Business)H-Index: 5
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The paper examines the opportunities in and possibilities arising from big data in retailing, particularly along five major data dimensions—data pertaining to customers, products, time, (geo-spatial) location and channel. Much of the increase in data quality and application possibilities comes from a mix of new data sources, a smart application of statistical tools and domain knowledge combined with theoretical insights. The importance of theory in guiding any systematic search for answers to re...
Technology is rapidly changing the nature of service, customers’ service frontline experiences, and customers’ relationships with service providers. Based on the prediction that in the marketplace of 2025, technology (e.g., service-providing humanoid robots) will be melded into numerous service experiences, this article spotlights technology’s ability to engage customers on a social level as a critical advancement of technology infusions. Specifically, it introduces the novel concept of automate...
AbstractUnderstanding customer experience and the customer journey over time is critical for firms. Customers now interact with firms through myriad touch points in multiple channels and media, and customer experiences are more social in nature. These changes require firms to integrate multiple business functions, and even external partners, in creating and delivering positive customer experiences. In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of customer experience and th...
Last. Ann Verhetsel(University of Antwerp)H-Index: 16
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Abstract null null Since the turn of the century especially small, local retailers struggle with the advent of e-commerce. It is hence no surprise that the retail sector is one of the hardest-hit sectors in the current pandemic. To understand the short- and longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on retail, we conducted two surveys to understand ongoing changes in the sector. By contrasting changing consumer behavior with the actions taken by local retailers, we assess whether the current pandemic is po...
Abstract The virtual assistants' market is drastically growing and is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2020. Nonetheless, the quick expansion and high penetration of e-retailers’ AI ecosystem into the shopper's journey is still under-researched in the extant literature. Amazon's Alexa in particular has been fast proliferating into the customer's journey, favoring the development of captive audiences given this new ambient environment. Through a mixed methodology using both qualitative and quant...
Abstract null null The ways in which emergent technologies are disrupting retailing are manifold. The Internet, social media, mobile technologies, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, and natural user interfaces all combine to grant consumers access to more information and channels than ever before, through virtually seamless connections with retailers, competitors, and other consumers. The resulting transformations, due to such technologies, thus are widespread, affecting retai...
Abstract Augmented reality retail applications (ARRAs) have emerged as rapidly developing innovative and futuristic retail innovation used in both physical store and online shops to improve the retail settings and customer experience. So, the objective of this research was to identify predictors of user benefits of ARRA in the retail food chain. By integrating the theory of information system success model, this study proposes a model to investigate the mediating effect of two values: (1) user s...
Abstract Emergent technologies offer retailers new opportunities for personalized promotional messages at the point-of-sale. Digital signage systems that employ face-reading software enable the identification of not only shoppers’ ages and genders, but also their mood states. Drawing on mood and digital signage literature, this research identifies and examines emotional targeting’s efficacy (i.e., matching digital signage content to shoppers’ current mood states) with consumer responses. Finding...
PurposeThe purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment and their consequent impacts on consumer behavioral responses in a retail furniture VR store context. Considering the lack of VR empirical research, the indirect effect of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment through telepresence and the moderating effect of consumer previous experience with VR are also included.Design...
This research aims to explore the impact of augmented reality (AR), the digital technology that superimposes virtual elements in a real environment, on consumers in the context of experiential marketing. Specifically, this study proposes a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response model, which considers AR media characteristics as external stimuli, consumers’ value perceptions as the organisms, and purchase intentions as the responses. The research model was tested with 248 consumer...