According to IBA Group, here are the top 5 retail trends now that can help retailers attract consumer attention and increase sales.

1. Personalization

Personalization is a natural result of marketing development in the retail of the future. It allows for improving buyer experience and making an attractive offer to a specific person, thereby increasing sales performance. Customer identification is ensured with the use of loyalty cards, and analytics is generated by dedicated software.

2. Contactless Shopping

The contactless store has become one of the major trends in retail and will hold this position in the next few years. It is not just that amid the pandemic, employers and consumers have become concerned about their own protection and health. There are fundamental changes in the behavior of buyers and the development of high technology.

Reasons why buyers choose contactless shopping include: time-saving, health concerns, and the opportunity to choose the format of purchase.

3. Process Automation

Many retail processes allow for automation, especially when it comes to marketing and displaying goods on merchandise shelves. For example, special-purpose software allows managers to monitor stocks and promptly report the need to replenish them.

One of the latest technical solutions for retail is computer vision. For example, the Goods Checker IT solution helps manufacturers and retailers cope with a number of tasks:

● segment the customer data based on video surveillance;
● recognize commodity items;
● enable merchandising optimization;

4. Using the Sustainability Model

Almost all major retailers have already adopted the principles of sustainable development as a basis. Many projects become part of the ecosystem.

As part of Sustainability, retailers are choosing energy-efficient equipment, lighting, and appliances, minimizing paper use, properly disposing of waste, and switching to alternative eco-packaging.

5. Focus on Digital

State-of-the-art digital tools are aimed at ensuring that the retailer is able to cover almost all the buyer’s demands at once. Retail chains have learned to extract information from social media, instant messengers, and calls to call centers. They use this information to understand where, how and what to sell to their customers. Thus, the number of loyal customers increases together with the average spending, and higher KPIs are achieved in various areas.

Retail of the Future: What’s Next?

Innovation in today’s retail market is indispensable. The consumer will see breathtaking supermarkets that have optimized the merchandising and marketing process. Everything will be built on customer experience with the introduction of advanced automated systems.

Learn more about IBA Group here.