Technology

The retail industry was held the reputation as being slow to adopt new technologies. Until the 80’s, merchandising executives struggled with methods to capture and analyze the volumes of data being generated at the store level. The problem was made more complicated by the number of dimensions of analysis: Stores, categories, vendors, products, colors and sizes. The introduction of the the PC was the event that began an era of mindset change.

Still, the sheer volume of product and locations made adoption of new technologies cost prohibitive. Each roll out required new equipment and accessories in every store, consider POS, RFID readers and  traffic counters,the cost of which are all store and product dependent.

With the advent of e-commerce, retailers are finding it necessary to introduce new shopping experiences. Employee costs are requiring other ways of providing instore support and the cost of shrinkage has generated the need for better deterrents.

In the following blog section we will discuss and introduce technologies that will dramatically affect the shopping experience and reduce retailer costs.