As retailers struggle with excess capacity, too much product, and a need to enhance the customer experience, it’s time to experiment with new (and old) ways of doing things. The marketplace model just may be that way. 

In an age where ‘drone’ and ‘delivery’ are now being used in the same sentence but consumers cry nostalgia for the simple, tactile experience of inspecting an item before buying, the ideal retail experience is getting harder and harder to pin down. The modern shopper demands efficiency but desires human connection. They harken back to a time when the digital experience hadn’t yet lured them into the dark shadows of the Internet, or when in-store limitations hadn’t borne inside them a hostility towards the brick and mortar experience.

With the Converge suite of display solutions, customers can interact with the tablet-and-rail system to get information about complex products, configure design options, discover and compare similar products in a category, or display an expanded range of products and their availability. Customers even have the option to send the information on the tablet directly to their mobile device while standing in the aisle.

June20’s digital display demo within the Retail2020 section of the Innovation Lab showcased its reinvention of the in-store shopping experience. June20's Converge retail technology platform adds a content-rich online experience through a sliding tablet that delivers videos, reviews and expanded content for the product the shopper is viewing on the shelf.

Though this Tesla demo is just a scenario, the Converge technology that powers this is in use at Home Depot. It’s one solid example of how retailers must be creative and tech-savvy to meet the expectations of today’s in-store shoppers.

Assisted Selling Displays. June20 introduced customization and bespoke configuration technology as part of the NRF Innovation Lab display.  The tool guides customers in the store to configure a product (such as a car) using a set of stations and dynamic tablet-format display to select color, fabric, texture (such as flat leather or wood grain) and more.

We recap NRF 2018 in a way that only Future Commerce can - LIVE from the show floor at The Big Show! Plus: is retail real estate in trouble? Have we left Omni Channel behind?

NRF 2018 Retail's Big Show included hundreds of sessions, miles of EXPO, innovative technologies and excellent content. 36,500 attendees experienced NRF 2018 in person, but if you missed out watch the recap!

At the packed NRF Big Show #NRF2018 in New York last week, many retailers looked at vendors touting new tech, including AI, AR/VR, and more, all in the name of improving customer experiences. But most of those same retailers know that, before leaping into that arena, they first need to bring existing systems up to speed, enable their front-line associates, and figure out how to build seamless, consistent experiences across online digital and the store.

Walking around the National Retail Federation’s annual convention and expo provides thousands of examples of retailers “improving the customer experience.” It’s a nice line, but what does that really mean for all of us consumers? NRF’s Sarah Neale Rand reports from the “Retail 2020” exhibit in the Innovation Lab at NRF 2018: Retail’s Big Show, where some of the coolest emerging tech that will shape the near-future of retail is on display.