With Internet Retailing Expo 2014 taking place next week, the mixture of mobile related issues in this week’s M-Retailing newsletter is a stark reminder that the event on 26-27 March couldn’t come soon enough. We stand at a real beginning of a new age in retailing… and it will be lead by mobile.
This week’s newsletter covers everything from Bluetooth Beacons, PoS and queuing issues, to bank backed mobile payments to coping with showrooming: and all these issues are driven by mobile and mobility.
But what pervades all of these stories is that there are problems. Consumers are getting ever more impatient with queuing in the traditional way, retailers are at the end of their collective tether with showrooming and there are so many major m-payments plays that picking the one to back is becoming an impossible choice. Even the roll out of the first use of Bluetooth Beacons in the UK hasn’t been smooth and its yet to really catch fire.
This is why IRX comes along at just the right time. The line up of speakers in the conference proper and the various workshops and sideshows is, frankly, incredible. OK, so it’s the major retailers, but the caliber of the speakers knowledge of e and m-commerce is astounding.
But that is just one facet of the event. Being such a big show, attracting many thousand prationers from retailers, vendors and consultants, IRX offers the ideal talking shop for everyone to actually discuss and learn with each other how to make this stuff really work – and on a budget.
There is so much going on that learning from the likes of Mark Cody, Senior Marketing Manager – Mobile, Tesco, Rob Feldmann, Chief Executive, BrandAlley UK, John Gillan, Industry Retail Leader, Google, Richard Newland, Commercial Director, Zapp, and Ashley Payne, Former Head of Digital Operations, Debenhams to name but a few is a pleasure but also there is much to learn from these guys. They have been at the forefront of developing the mobile elements of retail in quite a profound way – and session sponsor Zapp is leading the way in developing ubiquity in mobile payments – and they are going to help shape how the issues raised in this week’s news start to be addressed.
We are entering a mobile powered retail era and IRX is the place where it is going to start properly taking shape. Book your free ticket here
