November 14, 2025
frantic00/Depositphotos.com
Will an In-Store Retail Tech ‘Confidence Gap’ Create Winners and Losers?
According to research conducted by Retail Systems Research (RSR) on behalf of Jumpmind — titled “How Retailers Can Modernize In-Store Tech with Confidence” — there is an observable and significant disconnect between contemporary consumer expectations around in-store retail tech and the ability of many retailers to meet these asks.
“The physical store remains central to retail’s future. Despite the growth of digital commerce, many retailers still point to the store as their primary growth strategy. Yet paradoxically, many admit their in-store technology lags in delivering what today’s customers expect,” the report authors wrote.
“Shoppers now walk into stores already armed with product research, price comparisons, and personalized digital experiences. When they encounter outdated systems or disconnected in-store tools, the result is friction and disappointment. Retailers know this — but many still hesitate to modernize. The issue is not awareness of the opportunity, but a lack of confidence in how and where to invest,” they added.
Other notable findings related to the “confidence crisis” facing in-store retailers when it comes to adoption and integration of new tech:
- More than one-third (34%) of retail decision-makers surveyed said their organizations were unable to keep up with consumer adoption of new technologies.
- Slightly fewer respondents (31%) suggested that their existing systems weren’t up to snuff when it comes to meeting expectations set out by today’s customers and employees.
- The same percentage (31%) stated that they saw in-store retail tech investment as prohibitively expensive.
Many Retailers Hesitate To Adopt In-Store Retail Tech: Barriers and Legacy Lag
Breaking down the most common barriers keeping retailers from making serious investments in tech at their physical footprints, a majority of those polled indicated that technology was shifting too frequently to keep up with (54%), nearly half (49%) exhibited concerns over difficulty in quantifying ROI, while 38% pointed to the high overall cost of ownership tied to these investments, and a slightly smaller cohort (37%) had mixed feelings over whether new tech installations would serve as tools or distractions.
Further, a significant proportion of respondents (30%) admitted that “our infrastructure prevents progress,” with antiquated or obsolete technological infrastructure meaning that adoption of the latest tech solutions was impossible without an entire restructuring.
“Our research shows 27% of retailers have Point of Sale systems that are 5 years or older. In contrast, most consumers renew cell phones every two to three years and 12% renew them every year. It’s no wonder that over half of retailers surveyed feel trying to keep up with consumer adoption of technology seems like an impossible task,” said Steve Rowen, managing partner at RSR.
Winners in Retail Adopting In-Store Tech in Greater Frequency, Survey Suggests
In the press release detailing the release of the RSR-Jumpmind research, a delineation between surveyed retailers categorized as winners — who “showed greater ambition and momentum” in their retail tech modernization efforts — and “average” and “under performers” was posited.
Among these related survey outcomes:
- A striking majority (73%) of “retail winners” stated plans to deploy a single app to manage employee access to all required functionalities, versus 59% for average performers and under performers.
- Two-thirds (66%) of winners had plans to implement in-store, real-time, cross-channel customer and order information. A significantly lower cohort (51%) of average performers and under performers shared these plans.
- The same percentage of winners (66%) stated plans to have mobile devices serve as POS unit options, set against 58% of average performers and lower performers who said the same.
- About 63% of winners outlined intentions to install in-store fulfillment solutions involving tech. Approximately 55% of average performers and under performers answered similarly.
“Retailers must gain the confidence needed to move from hesitation to innovation in their in-store technology deployments,” said Lauren Cevallos, head of strategy and customer success at Jumpmind.
“Ultimately, confidence itself becomes a competitive strategy. Those who have it will transform their stores into hubs of digital-physical engagement; those who don’t risk being left behind,” Cevallos added.
BrainTrust
Bhargav Trivedi
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Ricardo Belmar
Retail Transformation Thought Leader, Advisor, & Strategist
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Are retailer concerns over tech obsolescence and a difficulty in measuring ROI from in-store tech spend justified? If so, what can be done to address these worries?
Does a significant investment in retail tech correlate with a business having more likelihood of retail success, or are the survey results overstated, in your opinion?
Poll
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Success in retail, first and foremost, lies in the traditional product, price, place, and promotion axis. Get those essential elements wrong, and it doesn’t matter how fancy or good the technology is – either in store or online. As for technology in store, yes, it can be useful and helpful, especially where it makes life easier for the customer or facilitates better operations, but it is not the primary driver of success. Anyone saying that is forgetting why most shoppers come into stores.
Anyone saying that is forgetting why most shoppers come into stores.
…or likely sells tech themselves
Quite. If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Or something like that…
In current market scenario, we may try to find blame in different arenas but real fact to represent sales is customer who is going through tough phase of social insecurity. Tech is there to ease the process and as long as its helping at different junction of retail process, but as mentioend,we need to see how tech is implemented, trained, upgraded and monitored.
I think it’s fair to say the concerns are understandable; it’s a lot harder to say if they’re justified…at least in the purely NPV calculation sense since these are complex and necessarily involve a lot of unknowns. I don’t really have a simple answer for a broad question like this (and the “research” is often sponsored by vendors whose self-interest is abundantly clear). Anecdotally I’m sure all of us can recall failing vendors making do with mechanical cash registers in the computer age, but they usually had other issues as well (translation: the lack of tech was many times a result, rather than a cause) And how do we figure in our evaluation retailers who place too much emphasis on tech? The many who think it’s a replacement for …well, every other aspect of what makes a successful company.
If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that retailers who fail to invest in technology adequately will fall further behind. It has been proven over decades. There are headwinds, yes, but now is not the time to hold back.
The concerns about technology have been challenging retailers for decades. What’s different today is the wide array of solutions, solution providers and promises. Investment in retail tech does not define the likelihood of success, it’s the effective execution/implementation of the tech that is the difference between realized value and ROI, or not. Too often retailers assume (and may be sold by technology providers), that a solution will deliver XX% ROI, but in my experience working with retailers, many struggle with realizing the ROI in part because they don’t setup proper experiments to measure outcomes and impacts in a meaningful way. Retailers should not get hung-up on the notion that they ‘need technology.’ What they need are to effectively implement and measure impact of the critical few tools/technologies that they believe will ultimately deliver a better store experience for shoppers and enable their frontline teams to serve customers more effectively/efficiently.
Retailers have a case that in-store tech evaluation is often murky when it comes to understanding ROI. Measurement often reveal new qualitative outputs too, making it more difficult to find answers other than “everyone loves it”. Many in-store tech options do require a significant investment in time and labor to operate each week. And so, if usage is infrequent or represents a small % of shoppers, retailers must decide if adoption has an upward trajectory, driving higher sales and profit, or in reducing cost. In other words, are customers using the in-store tech to save time, money, or improve their own experience? If unclear or no, it’s probably time to pull the plug.
A lot of the confidence gap comes from the pace of new tech. Retailers can’t realistically overhaul their systems every time a new tool hits the market. The real opportunity is in solutions that run on the devices teams already use and fit into existing workflows. The retailers who win won’t be the ones with the most tools, but the ones who invest in tools that work with how teams already operate day to day.
All those retailer concerns are valid, understandable reasons for them to pause before investing in store tech.
The fragmentation of siloed systems is a massive challenge. In-store tech providers that offer consolidation, efficiency and streamlined processes will gain an edge.
Retailers have been concerned about technology since the beginning of the barcode. Cost vs ROI has always been a factor. Retailers are, after all, a business, and they need to know that anything they invest in will produce results in the desired timeframe. The bigger challenge these days is the pace of change in technology which is now faster than ever. It’s’ understandable that retailers don’t feel like they can keep pace with their consumers. A consumer is upgrading tech for a quantity of one – themselves. A retailer may be upgrading tech for a quantity of hundreds to thousands of stores. Scale makes everything more challenging! So yes, these are reasons that cause retailers to choose their technology carefully.
Smart retailers know that before they worry about what in-store tech to put in front of customers, they need to get the fundamentals right. Do they have the right products in stock? Are they merchandised well? There are many more basic customer experience questions to be solved before technology becomes the issue. Of course some technology can be used to augment the experience and make it easier to address and answer these questions. This is why every time we see a research report analyzing the ROI of tech investment, it becomes quite clear that those that invest at higher levels, and early, tend to produce better sales outcomes more rapidly than laggards. Retailers that fail to invest in technology tend to lag behind and stay behind until they simply fade away. Used correctly, in-store tech can create differentiation, but only if those fundamentals are already in place!
Retailer concerns about tech obsolescence and the challenge of measuring ROI are absolutely justified. In my experience, many technologies evolve so quickly that by the time a retailer pilots, validates, and prepares to scale a solution, something newer and more compelling is already in the market. Add to that the difficulty of tying in-store tech to concrete outcomes—labor savings, conversion lifts, improved inventory accuracy—and it’s no wonder many retailers hesitate. These are real operational worries, not resistance to innovation.
That said, I do believe that retailers who invest strategically in the right technology and align it closely with their format and core consumer are far more likely to outperform. Technology by itself doesn’t create success; smart, well-measured technology does. When retailers deploy solutions that genuinely solve a customer or associate pain point—mobile POS that reduces wait times, real-time inventory visibility, or unified customer profiles across channels—the results tend to show up in better service, better execution, and ultimately better financial performance.
My advice is straightforward: define clear KPIs up front, pilot against measurable goals, and ensure the tech integrates cleanly into day-to-day operations before scaling. When retailers treat tech investments with the same discipline they apply to assortment planning or supply chain decisions, the ROI becomes far easier to quantify. In other words, tech becomes far less risky—and far more transformative—when it’s rooted in consumer needs, operational reality, and a commitment to disciplined measurement.
I believe that retailers need to invest in technology in order to keep up, but I also wonder how many customers are aware of it. We just expect things to be easy and to work.
As a consumer the only time I have been disappointed in technology on the sales floor is when the retailer’s POS system is down and the associates don’t have a contingency plan to accept payment.
Retailers are justified in worrying about tech obsolescence and the difficulty of measuring ROI, but those concerns can’t become an excuse to stand still. Customer expectations are rising faster than most retailers’ upgrade cycles, and while price will always get people through the door, the experience is extremely important for them to come back. Long checkout lines, inaccurate inventory, or the inability to locate items in an endless-aisle environment can outweigh any pricing advantage.
The reality is that many retailers still treat their mobile POS, ecommerce site, and in-store tools as separate worlds, when customers experience them has one unified journey. That’s where confidence in modernization really matters. A true omnichannel architecture, where a mobile POS and the website draw on the same data and the same experience layer, is no longer an aspiration for the future; it is a matter of practical necessity. And the more complex the legacy stack, the harder it is to deliver even basic expectations like real-time stock visibility or flexible checkout.
A smart path forward is one that de-risks modernization through well-designed proof-of-concepts and phased rollouts. Retailers don’t need massive, multi-year replacements; they need incremental wins that prove value quickly. Over time, the POS should be simplified to something as lightweight as a laptop or tablet, with most capabilities delivered through web applications that can evolve rapidly without heavy hardware dependencies.
Retailers who continue investing in the right in-store technologies towards true omnichannel experience remove friction, empower associates, and make the store feel connected rather than outdated. Confidence isn’t just a mindset; it’s becoming a competitive strategy.
Even though the confidence gap is real and it might point to strategic paralysis, appropriate skepticism is necessary in a market full of vendor promises. Winners will 1) invest in technology that genuinely removes friction from the consumer experience (real-time inventory, flexible fulfillment, seamless checkout); 2) be diligent at measuring outcomes before scaling; 3) distinguish between technologies that serve their strategy versus technologies that serve platform ecosystems. Regardless, baseline infrastructure is now a prerequisite for competing (not a competitive advantage). In 2025, you cannot operate on outdated infrastructure while expecting to compete against Walmart’s AI partnerships and Amazon’s real-time fulfillment orchestration.
The focus on retailer “confidence” is missing the 70% of the story that justifies the hesitation. The reluctance to invest is often a rational response to ecosystem failure, not simply internal fear.
- 1. The “Skeleton Software” Trap: Vendors frequently sell a low-cost foundational solution (“skeleton”) only to then aggressively bargain for the essential plugins and integrations required for the system to actually work. This instantly erodes trust and makes the TCO unpredictable.
- 2. Directionless Consulting: Retail consultants often provide high-level strategy without the necessary hands-on implementation direction, leading to expensive, non-operational pilot programs and failure to transition from concept to execution.
- 3. The Flawed Adaptive Customer Myth: The assumption that consumers are eager for front-end tech is misleading. If new systems (like self-scanning) shift the burden of work to the shopper or are glitchy, customer adoption fails, reinforcing the retailer’s fear of poor ROI.
- 4. Unified Commerce Disconnect: Vendors promise unified commerce but deliver fragmented tech stacks, forcing retailers to undertake massive, costly, high-risk integration projects just to get the solution to function as advertised.
The confidence gap is not a fear of change; it’s a learned response to a decade of broken vendor promises and fragmented, high-risk implementations
Tech is a tool. It is not a solution in itself. First, the retailer must define the objective, then adopt the tech that addresses that solution. If that is done correctly, the ROI will take care of itself, and obsolescence will not be an issue.
Retailers are right to worry about fast-changing tech and unclear ROI. Many stores still run on outdated systems, and that makes any new investment feel risky. Customers, however, expect real-time information, faster service, and smoother interactions, so the gap between expectation and capability keeps getting wider.
In my view, the answer is not adopting more tools but choosing a few that directly improve accuracy, speed, or service. When retailers define clear goals, run measured pilots, and focus on tools that fit existing workflows, the confidence gap shrinks. The stores that follow this path usually move forward faster and see more consistent results.
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Success in retail, first and foremost, lies in the traditional product, price, place, and promotion axis. Get those essential elements wrong, and it doesn’t matter how fancy or good the technology is – either in store or online. As for technology in store, yes, it can be useful and helpful, especially where it makes life easier for the customer or facilitates better operations, but it is not the primary driver of success. Anyone saying that is forgetting why most shoppers come into stores.
…or likely sells tech themselves
Quite. If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Or something like that…
In current market scenario, we may try to find blame in different arenas but real fact to represent sales is customer who is going through tough phase of social insecurity. Tech is there to ease the process and as long as its helping at different junction of retail process, but as mentioend,we need to see how tech is implemented, trained, upgraded and monitored.
I think it’s fair to say the concerns are understandable; it’s a lot harder to say if they’re justified…at least in the purely NPV calculation sense since these are complex and necessarily involve a lot of unknowns. I don’t really have a simple answer for a broad question like this (and the “research” is often sponsored by vendors whose self-interest is abundantly clear). Anecdotally I’m sure all of us can recall failing vendors making do with mechanical cash registers in the computer age, but they usually had other issues as well (translation: the lack of tech was many times a result, rather than a cause) And how do we figure in our evaluation retailers who place too much emphasis on tech? The many who think it’s a replacement for …well, every other aspect of what makes a successful company.
If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that retailers who fail to invest in technology adequately will fall further behind. It has been proven over decades. There are headwinds, yes, but now is not the time to hold back.
The concerns about technology have been challenging retailers for decades. What’s different today is the wide array of solutions, solution providers and promises. Investment in retail tech does not define the likelihood of success, it’s the effective execution/implementation of the tech that is the difference between realized value and ROI, or not. Too often retailers assume (and may be sold by technology providers), that a solution will deliver XX% ROI, but in my experience working with retailers, many struggle with realizing the ROI in part because they don’t setup proper experiments to measure outcomes and impacts in a meaningful way. Retailers should not get hung-up on the notion that they ‘need technology.’ What they need are to effectively implement and measure impact of the critical few tools/technologies that they believe will ultimately deliver a better store experience for shoppers and enable their frontline teams to serve customers more effectively/efficiently.
Retailers have a case that in-store tech evaluation is often murky when it comes to understanding ROI. Measurement often reveal new qualitative outputs too, making it more difficult to find answers other than “everyone loves it”. Many in-store tech options do require a significant investment in time and labor to operate each week. And so, if usage is infrequent or represents a small % of shoppers, retailers must decide if adoption has an upward trajectory, driving higher sales and profit, or in reducing cost. In other words, are customers using the in-store tech to save time, money, or improve their own experience? If unclear or no, it’s probably time to pull the plug.
A lot of the confidence gap comes from the pace of new tech. Retailers can’t realistically overhaul their systems every time a new tool hits the market. The real opportunity is in solutions that run on the devices teams already use and fit into existing workflows. The retailers who win won’t be the ones with the most tools, but the ones who invest in tools that work with how teams already operate day to day.
All those retailer concerns are valid, understandable reasons for them to pause before investing in store tech.
The fragmentation of siloed systems is a massive challenge. In-store tech providers that offer consolidation, efficiency and streamlined processes will gain an edge.
Retailers have been concerned about technology since the beginning of the barcode. Cost vs ROI has always been a factor. Retailers are, after all, a business, and they need to know that anything they invest in will produce results in the desired timeframe. The bigger challenge these days is the pace of change in technology which is now faster than ever. It’s’ understandable that retailers don’t feel like they can keep pace with their consumers. A consumer is upgrading tech for a quantity of one – themselves. A retailer may be upgrading tech for a quantity of hundreds to thousands of stores. Scale makes everything more challenging! So yes, these are reasons that cause retailers to choose their technology carefully.
Smart retailers know that before they worry about what in-store tech to put in front of customers, they need to get the fundamentals right. Do they have the right products in stock? Are they merchandised well? There are many more basic customer experience questions to be solved before technology becomes the issue. Of course some technology can be used to augment the experience and make it easier to address and answer these questions. This is why every time we see a research report analyzing the ROI of tech investment, it becomes quite clear that those that invest at higher levels, and early, tend to produce better sales outcomes more rapidly than laggards. Retailers that fail to invest in technology tend to lag behind and stay behind until they simply fade away. Used correctly, in-store tech can create differentiation, but only if those fundamentals are already in place!
Retailer concerns about tech obsolescence and the challenge of measuring ROI are absolutely justified. In my experience, many technologies evolve so quickly that by the time a retailer pilots, validates, and prepares to scale a solution, something newer and more compelling is already in the market. Add to that the difficulty of tying in-store tech to concrete outcomes—labor savings, conversion lifts, improved inventory accuracy—and it’s no wonder many retailers hesitate. These are real operational worries, not resistance to innovation.
That said, I do believe that retailers who invest strategically in the right technology and align it closely with their format and core consumer are far more likely to outperform. Technology by itself doesn’t create success; smart, well-measured technology does. When retailers deploy solutions that genuinely solve a customer or associate pain point—mobile POS that reduces wait times, real-time inventory visibility, or unified customer profiles across channels—the results tend to show up in better service, better execution, and ultimately better financial performance.
My advice is straightforward: define clear KPIs up front, pilot against measurable goals, and ensure the tech integrates cleanly into day-to-day operations before scaling. When retailers treat tech investments with the same discipline they apply to assortment planning or supply chain decisions, the ROI becomes far easier to quantify. In other words, tech becomes far less risky—and far more transformative—when it’s rooted in consumer needs, operational reality, and a commitment to disciplined measurement.
I believe that retailers need to invest in technology in order to keep up, but I also wonder how many customers are aware of it. We just expect things to be easy and to work.
As a consumer the only time I have been disappointed in technology on the sales floor is when the retailer’s POS system is down and the associates don’t have a contingency plan to accept payment.
Retailers are justified in worrying about tech obsolescence and the difficulty of measuring ROI, but those concerns can’t become an excuse to stand still. Customer expectations are rising faster than most retailers’ upgrade cycles, and while price will always get people through the door, the experience is extremely important for them to come back. Long checkout lines, inaccurate inventory, or the inability to locate items in an endless-aisle environment can outweigh any pricing advantage.
The reality is that many retailers still treat their mobile POS, ecommerce site, and in-store tools as separate worlds, when customers experience them has one unified journey. That’s where confidence in modernization really matters. A true omnichannel architecture, where a mobile POS and the website draw on the same data and the same experience layer, is no longer an aspiration for the future; it is a matter of practical necessity. And the more complex the legacy stack, the harder it is to deliver even basic expectations like real-time stock visibility or flexible checkout.
A smart path forward is one that de-risks modernization through well-designed proof-of-concepts and phased rollouts. Retailers don’t need massive, multi-year replacements; they need incremental wins that prove value quickly. Over time, the POS should be simplified to something as lightweight as a laptop or tablet, with most capabilities delivered through web applications that can evolve rapidly without heavy hardware dependencies.
Retailers who continue investing in the right in-store technologies towards true omnichannel experience remove friction, empower associates, and make the store feel connected rather than outdated. Confidence isn’t just a mindset; it’s becoming a competitive strategy.
Even though the confidence gap is real and it might point to strategic paralysis, appropriate skepticism is necessary in a market full of vendor promises. Winners will 1) invest in technology that genuinely removes friction from the consumer experience (real-time inventory, flexible fulfillment, seamless checkout); 2) be diligent at measuring outcomes before scaling; 3) distinguish between technologies that serve their strategy versus technologies that serve platform ecosystems. Regardless, baseline infrastructure is now a prerequisite for competing (not a competitive advantage). In 2025, you cannot operate on outdated infrastructure while expecting to compete against Walmart’s AI partnerships and Amazon’s real-time fulfillment orchestration.
The focus on retailer “confidence” is missing the 70% of the story that justifies the hesitation. The reluctance to invest is often a rational response to ecosystem failure, not simply internal fear.
The confidence gap is not a fear of change; it’s a learned response to a decade of broken vendor promises and fragmented, high-risk implementations
Tech is a tool. It is not a solution in itself. First, the retailer must define the objective, then adopt the tech that addresses that solution. If that is done correctly, the ROI will take care of itself, and obsolescence will not be an issue.
Retailers are right to worry about fast-changing tech and unclear ROI. Many stores still run on outdated systems, and that makes any new investment feel risky. Customers, however, expect real-time information, faster service, and smoother interactions, so the gap between expectation and capability keeps getting wider.
In my view, the answer is not adopting more tools but choosing a few that directly improve accuracy, speed, or service. When retailers define clear goals, run measured pilots, and focus on tools that fit existing workflows, the confidence gap shrinks. The stores that follow this path usually move forward faster and see more consistent results.