How Retailers are Transforming the In-Store Experience

Imagine satisfying a late-night sweet tooth by using a cupcake ATM. Or, picture using a digital touch screen to design your own shoes, sunglasses, or hockey jerseys in a sports store. Both are real-world examples of a trend toward bringing the latest in technology to brick-and-mortar shopping experiences in “Stores of the Future,” where shopping is decidedly more entertaining.

E-commerce has grown, but the retail stores still accounts for the lion’s share of sales (an estimated 90 percent in 2018). Customers want to see, try, and feel merchandise before making a purchase, yet they crave the excitement and convenience of using technology to experience products and shop in new ways. That’s why many retailers are reinventing in-store shopping.

In the Stores of the Future, four tenets—merchandising, personalization, convenience and engagement—are being taken to new levels through technology. With new technologies from Adobe, retailers have highly efficient, intuitive ways to extend digital experiences to brick-and-mortar locations. For instance, strategically placed third-party displays can change dynamically to present interactivity that makes shopping more playful, personalized and immersive.

With integrated digital technologies, shopping experiences are not only much more enjoyable for customers, but they are also more powerful for retailers. Marketers can now connect brick-and-mortar and digital interactions to create unique, highly personalized in-store experiences. If customers also elect to share information such as location, iBeacons and other digital shopping technologies enable retailers to present information that further refines every customer’s experience.

Along the way big data captured and analyzed as a result of in-store interactions can help shape content and promotions, drive dynamic pricing and even inform inventory management based on demand. These insights can also be used to shape more effective visual merchandising, store layouts, and product placement to optimize the flow of foot traffic.

This is an exciting time for retailers, as new technologies transform in-store shopping experiences. And consumers—stay tuned. A more fun, lively shopping experience is coming soon to a retail store near you.

I’m excited about the future of retail. We have a lot in store for you during the Retail Super Session at Adobe Summit. Please join me; Eugene Roman, CTO of Canadian Tire Corp; Adam Silverman, Principal Analyst at Forrester; Jason Goldberg, GVP Strategy at Razorfish; and others who will talk about what’s possible today and what to look towards for tomorrow. Watch a recording of the session on-demand!

For more information on how to build a retail Store of the Future and maximize the effectiveness of merchandising, personalization, convenience and engagement, download the latest Adobe paper on “Retail Stores of the Future: Four Key Focus Areas for Building Them Today.”

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