Will click & collect finally compel retailers to remodel stores?
Some repercussions of omnichannel’s impact on stores can be predicted and others you have to live through. This holiday season is expected to be the highest v...
Retailers lack of trust undermines predictive personalization’s potential
Predictive personalization’s greatest pitfall is retailers themselves. Why? Because they don’t trust the technology. Does personalization have a trust issue...
Are retailers getting comfy with click & collect?
During a panel at the CONNECT Mobile CX Summit in Philadelphia, panelists from Jersey Mike’s, Kohl’s and Brookstone talked about unintended consequences fro...
Why don’t more retailers ‘get’ curation?
Do retailers realize how important curation is when it comes to differentiating their brands? Short answer: Nope. If you can’t explain to customers why you’...
Are retailers measuring omnichannel all wrong?
There is a point where customer engagement leads to more sales. But there is also a point where it leads to diminishing returns. That’s the beauty of the sale...
Who owns the in-store experience?
Who owns the customer experience? The discussion usually focuses on the conflict between merchandising, which “knows” the customer best, and marketing, whic...
Does store operations have a seat at the digital transformation table?
The reality is that user experience design and the process of rolling out software (and hardware) to stores is just not that smooth, and it may never be. Why is...
Will consumers finally pay for service?
Retailers might think they’ll know when they reach the point where consumers say, “Enough! I will pay for better service,” but the reality is, there’s a...
Will personalized pricing end retailers’ use of dynamic pricing?
While sometimes used interchangeably, dynamic and personalized pricing are not the same thing. Do you see a bigger potential benefit for retailers using persona...
Is Amazon’s Alexa a threat to rival retailers?
About a month ago, a six-year old managed to order a dollhouse and six pounds of cookies by interacting with Alexa. A lesson in setting a PIN for mom. In what w...
How good is ‘close enough’ when it comes to in-store inventory?
In RSR’s most recent look into retailers’ supply chain execution strategies, we found a lot to be wanting. Retailers are, for the most part, only guessing h...
Will 2017 be the year retailers start making their stores relevant again?
This is a dangerous time for store-based retail. Are there retailers who will figure out the future of the store and how that will look? Do you see that retaile...
Why are retail employees going around company systems?
When discussing the future of the store, when the part about workforce transitions arrives, heads nod about how Gen Z is even more likely than Millennials to be...
Here’s one way retailers can measure cross-channel influence
How much do stores really influence online and how much does online really influence stores? The topic came up at a recent event focused on omnichannel and the ...
Retailers’ top four omnichannel investments in 2017
RSR's annual benchmark on retailers’ omnichannel strategies shows that core omnichannel technologies added over the last decade are getting a little long in t...
Is consumer demand really that unpredictable?
According to RSR’s benchmark report on omnichannel order profitability, unpredictable consumer demand is the top business challenge among retail respondents. ...
Retail executives have no clue about digital
Despite at least 10 years of massive investments in brainpower trying to understand and predict what digital means for retail, the shopping experience in 2016 s...
Is it OK for brands to have emotions?
Millennials increasingly demand meaning from the companies they engage with — not only those they work for, but buy from. Do you think it’s become more impo...
When did tech companies lose their point of view?
A phrase heard lately from tech vendors has been: "Any way they want it." Is today's rapidly shifting environment compelling technology vendors to become more f...
Justifying IT infrastructure investments
It wasn't that long ago that the IT department drove IT investments. However, now business leaders (mostly) make those decisions. IT infrastructure investments ...