What lies ahead for the retail store? Yesterday, Forrester published a report that predicts the answers to key questions about the future of the retail store: Which digital technologies currently on the periphery of the store environment will make the leap to the sales floor? How will retailers know which technologies have potential and which will remain gimmicks?

In the report, we outline the utility and predicted chronology of several technologies, including:

  • Proximity technologies. Retailers will know when and where an associate is needed, by whom, and for what purpose.
  • Wearable technologies. Associates will access the relevant data to provide optimum customer service with minimum intrusion.
  • Facial scanning technologies. Retailers will know their in-store customers’ histories, preferences, intentions, and needs and will cater the store experience to them.
  • Smart countertops. Retailers will embrace consumers’ propensity to do product research while shopping in-store and enhance the utility and experience at the same time.
  • 3D printing. Retailers will make the inventory they need on-site or once it’s been purchased.

For more on Forrester’s take on the usefulness of these and other technologies, and to see our predictions of when we’ll see them enter the retail store, see the report (client access required).

Which technologies do you think will realistically make it into retail stores of the future?

I look forward to your thoughts. 

Lily