Consumer Electronics

Nordstrom Rack is coming to New Orleans.

How will retailers fare in 2016? Very well, according to experienced market watchers.

“We expect core retail sales to grow 5.3% in 2016,” says Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics for Moody’s Analytics, a research firm based in West Chester, Pennsylvania. (Core retail sales exclude volatile revenues from auto sales and gas stations.)

That is notably faster than the 4.2% rate anticipated when 2015 sales are finally tallied. The 2015 experience was, again, slightly better than that the 3.9% growth of 2014.

The massive consumer technology show known as CES is underway in Las Vegas and retailers in attendance will trolling an area of the 2.4 million-sq.-ft. show floor called Eureka Park in hopes of finding the next big thing.

A planned expansion of Samsung Pay is the latest in a seemingly endless series of maneuvers made by mobile payment providers throughout 2015.

In an interview with Reuters, Thomas Ko, global co-manager of Samsung Pay, said U.S. consumers will be able to use the mobile wallet solution for online payments in 2016. In addition, Samsung will roll out Samsung Pay to a broader range of lower-priced phones in the U.S. in the coming year. Currently, it is only available as a built-in feature on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices.

Retail business industry veteran Lawrence Jackson has been named to the board of directors of cloud-based enterprise retail technology provider Aptos Inc. (formerly Epicor Retail Solutions).

Last week, I looked at the top three trends that disrupted how retailers engage their customers during 2015. This week, I predict the top three trends that will set the course for customer engagement in 2016.

As Seen on TV

Retailers just went through an increasingly digital and mobile holiday season.

According to analysis performed by the IBM Watson business intelligence platform, the average order value for the mobile and desktop shopper combined was $127.49, up 2.5% from 2014 ($124.33).

Consumers also shopped via their mobile devices in growing numbers. Mobile traffic exceeded desktop, traffic, accounting for 52% of all online traffic. This was a 17% increase in mobile traffic from 2014.

Smartwatch-based commerce only represents a sliver of total e-commerce, but that may soon be due for a change.

According to new research from Mintel, smartwatch sales are set to boom in the near future. While only 6% of Americans currently own a smartwatch, 21% of consumers who purchased a watch in the past 12 months say they are very interested in the smartwatch trend. And 24% of consumers have bought a watch in the past 12 months.