2014 National Retail Federation Big Show Recap

 

Every year in New York, more than 30,000 retail professionals gather at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show to exhibit solutions and discuss the trends as well as future of the retail industry. As the 2014 NRF Big Show came to an end, we wanted to highlight technology trends that are on every retailers mind.

 

 

Using Mobile to Improve the Customer Experience

Customer journey mapping has always been a top priority for retailers. Finding out which customers browses what aisles, and what they gravitate towards inside the store serves as invaluable information to generate sales. If customers choose to opt-in, they can also receive timely promotional messages as they browse through the store. Retailers with loyalty programs incorporated into mobile applications hope to take the in-store mobile experience one-step further by offering mobile payments as well as promotional loyalty offers to customers.

 

“Mobile has officially hit its stride and its future is already here. If retailers aren’t already exploring a mobile strategy, from mobile-optimized sites to payments to security and more, they are at a severe disadvantage with their competitors.” – Eric Olson, VP Education Strategies, NRF

 

Doing More with Big Data

2014 brings a shift from collecting big data to acting on it. Retailers are now starting to focus on perspective analytics (assigning actions to data), rather than descriptive analytics (describing the data). Macy’s has labeled big data as a major competitor for 2014, stating that competitive advantage will go to retailers that are analyzing their data and are advancing towards next-based actions based on insights.

 

Tackling Data Security & Breaches

Retailers continue to collect more sensitive data about their customers, and are taking shopping to multiple channels (online, mobile, in-store). It is becoming imperative that they tackle constant information breaches making headlines. Our CTO wrote about this earlier, explaining why mobile security breaches happen. Retailers are now toughening up efforts with the more expensive chip-and-pin technology, which could have prevented many of the security breaches. As chip-and-pin continues to popularize, the US payments industry plans to replace magnetic strips by 2020.

 

Interested in more information on how retailers can leverage loyalty programs and mobile applications to improve their sales and customer experience? Would you like to have a conversation with our CTO regarding data security? Feel free to get in touch with us!