As retail organizations increasingly adopt automation technology, their expectations of it are evolving. In 2019, they identified financial gains like higher cost savings and profit margins as the top benefits of automation; by 2021, these had given way to customer-focused benefits like competitive differentiation, the ability to offer new products and services, and better customer experiences. Retailers today are looking to leverage automation for such brand-level benefits rather than maintaining a blinkered view of its operational advantages. This report provides a snapshot of Forrester’s data on how the perceived benefits of automation technologies are changing for retail firms.