Omnichannel

This holiday season shoppers will see many new high-tech and digital advancements in stores, from self-service kiosks and free Wi-Fi to mobile pay and retail apps. In the coming years, shoppers may even find robots helping them face-to-face.  

The ICSC New York Conference is one of the larger gatherings of retail real estate professional’s on the calendar – and is an important touch point for professionals in the NYC market. Ahead of the show, Bob Gibson, retail vice chairman of JLL, based in New York, shared his take on this expansive and important retail market.  

Ashley Furniture is jumping into virtual and augmented reality to help shoppers visualize how furnishings can fit into a space more accurately.    The retailer is launching a company-wide virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) initiative that is designed to enable consumers to create interior layouts and experience living spaces in 3D. Ashley Furniture will create and scale its product catalogue for AR and VR, and publish new 3D product experiences, with a platform from augmented reality and virtual reality provider Marxent.

The need for digital transformation, more integrated IT and operations, business security, and rethinking the future of work are among the themes that dominate IDC Retail Insight’s top 10 predictions for worldwide retail 2017.   While the predictions largely focus on the near- to mid-term (2017–2020), the impact, in some instances, will be felt for years to come, according to IDC. Most of the predictions refer to a continuum of change within the wider ecosystem of the retail industry and global economy.

Wayfair not only dominated during Cyber Week — it hit a company high.    The pure play home furnishings retailer reported a 52% increase year-over-year in direct retail gross sales (defined as dollars of order intake) for the five-day peak shopping period of Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. The growth rate of total company gross sales was 46% YOY during the same period.   

Cart abandonment is a very real problem during the holiday season, but mobile users are giving up on orders most often.   These details were revealed in an infographic from Barilliance that detailed shopping behavior among 50 million consumers between Nov. 25 and Nov. 28.   

Not many companies can follow up its own record-breaking Thanksgiving online sales -- but Kohl’s did.   The chain’s president and CEO Kevin Mansell said that the chain hit double-digit, record-breaking online sales and solid brick-and-mortar traffic to stores on Thursday, Nov. 24 and early Friday, Nov. 25, reported Milwaukee Business Journal.  

Incorporating digital components into the physical store is the next frontier for retailers. You see, customers’ expectations have grown while their attention spans have shrunk. Some reports have even found that goldfish (yes, you read that right, goldfish) have a longer attention span than humans.