24 HORIZONS
A glimpse of tomorrow’s retailing world
A recent trip to the 100th NRF show in New York gave retailers and suppliers alike a look at what’s on the horizon for retailers
or a retail show in its 100th year, it was full of innovative technology that will help retailers evolve and develop their appeal to their customers in new and exciting ways.
F Vince Haffenden, a director at retail
IT services provider Vista Retail Support, provides some insight into the experience and outlines how the retail industry, as a whole, should embrace these changes or face being left behind. At this year’s NRF, Haffenden said the
industry was buzzing with talk about mobile technology, as it has been for a while now. “In the past when technology becomes a hot topic it can often remain just that – for example, take radio frequency identifi cation (RFID), which was has been spoken about as the next big thing for many years now. However, the difference with mobile technology is that it’s here, it’s happening and it has the potential to change the world we live in for retailers and customers alike forever,” he said. “Over the course of the next decade, the
way that retailers interact with customers will change dramatically,” Haffenden continued. “The traditional EPoS [electronic point-of- sale] will transform to a mobile device that will allow both the retailer and the customer to transact fully wherever they are in the store. No more queuing at the till, as your smartphone will give you not only scanning but also full payment capability almost anywhere in the store. “While this is very convenient for the
customer, it also has huge advantages for the retailer. The transaction may sit on the customer’s smartphone or it may sit on the store’s mobile device. Whichever it is, the
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011
retailer will have the customer captured in front of a screen and able to market to them at a point in the transaction where they are most likely to be receptive to further offers,” he added.
The other ‘next big thing’ according to
Haffenden is instore multimedia. “NEC was showing an 8-by-4-foot digital wall that had such high resolution that even up close, and I mean within inches of the screen, you couldn’t discern the pixels. It was made up of eight individual screens that could be driven as a single huge HD [high-defi nition] screen, eight single screens or any combination in between. It took eight PCs to drive it and would take a truck to deliver it but if you wanted to grab attention in a retail environment, it was a really impressive product. “If you couple it with some very clever gender recognition software, you can now deliver gender specifi c real-time media in store,” he observed. The fi nal “next big thing” Haffenden sited was Near Field Communication (NFC)
– a short-range wireless communication protocol that is secure enough to be used as a card payment method. He explained: “This technology is already widespread in the Far East but is just being launched in the US, UK and Europe. It moves the ‘electronic wallet’ forward and makes it useable. Once you’re device is set up and you need to make a payment, all you do is swipe your phone across a touch pad and the payment’s made. Already thousands of UK store have the contactless payment terminals installed and they’re just waiting for the enabled devices to turn up in the hands of the customers. T Mobile and Orange claim they’ll be the fi rst to market with a mobile product that will offer the capability, but the rest won’t be far behind.” One of the things that became increasingly
obvious at NRF was, with retailers interacting directly with customers in so many different ways, it will be vital for them to work closer with their partners to ensure they can deliver great service to a more diverse, demanding customer base.
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