Brick and Mortar Stores Benefit from Tech Innovation

Success is in store for retailers embracing technology.

June 20, 2014

NEW YORK – Technology is inherent in online retail; we know that online merchants rely on tech and data to make sales — and keep to selling. But when it comes to brick-and-mortar retail, innovation and commerce haven’t always been so connected. But traditional retailers have been making strides, using technology to improve the in-store customer experience — and, in turn, their bottom lines.

So, how are traditional retailers strengthening the intersection between the technology and the transaction? According to a report from Forbes BrandVoice, these are the key areas for retailers to learn about.

Personalization and retail IT: Adopting technology that helps make shopping more personalized. For example, home improvement store Lowe’s uses StoreMode technology in their apps to enable customers to scan barcodes with their smartphones, build shopping lists, find stores nearby, find the merchandise they’re looking for within a store, and find related products that might be needed. Another retailer, drugstore Duane Reade, uses iBeacon, which allows customers using the app to be greeted by notifications featuring coupons based on historical data and product reviews, when they approach a store.

Enhanced security leads to innovation: Another advancement that cannot only aid in personalization, but security as well, is chip-and-PIN technology for credit and debit cards. (Read more about this in the May issue of NACS Magazine, “Half Covered.”) In addition to standard customer data, the chips can store information for customer loyalty and rewards programs, potentially making that stack of reward cards in your wallet a thing of the past. These credit and debit cards are also safer than traditional cards, because the chip-and-PIN technology makes it harder to steal data, even in a breach.

Digital merchandising and the in-store experience: Implementing new merchandising technology is another way retailers are improving the in-store experience — because before customers even get to the transaction, they have to interact with the merchandise. Technology like digitizing SKUs can help retailers bring the right product to the right shopper at the right time. These digitized SKUs can link inventory with customer interactions and improve store offerings to meet demand. Digitized SKUs also can give traditional retailers the kinds of data insights that online retailers use to target customers.

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