In today’s InternetRetailing newsletter, we’re looking to the present and future of retail. We ask Helen Dickinson of the British Retail Consortium how she sees the industry developing in coming months, and we focus in our IRX 2018 coverage on five themes that stood out at the expo because they point both to the current cutting edge of retail and to its future development. All of this is important because, as Paul Wilkinson of Tesco Labs said at IRX, the “technology curve is rampant – if you don’t get onto this now you’ll get left behind”. He was speaking about voice commerce, but it’s just as true for the other areas we focus on in today’s newsletter.
We report on Game’s strategy to rebalance away from “low margin” retail and towards “higher margin” in-store experiences and on Moss Bross as it reports online progress – but is hit by stock availability issues.
We look ahead to a buoyant Easter weekend – unless, that is, there is a return for the Beast from the East, and we report on research that predicts moves to enable customers to buy now, pay later will lead to a ‘tsunami of returns’. And we report on how JD Sports is buying Finish Line in order to move into the US market.
Today’s guest comment comes from Mark Thomson of Zebra Technologies, who considers how to make click and collect profitable.
Webinars
Find out more about upcoming InternetRetailing webinars and register for free on the InternetRetailing webinar page. You can also catch up with past webinars on the page: recent sessions have come from IBM Watson on using AI to improve the customer experience, and from SmartFocus and The Entertainer on using social to reach digital customers.
