Round Table on The Future of Retail

The National Retail Federation is having a giant trade show in town, and it provides an opportunity to have several retail technology executives around a table for a discussion about the future of the businesses they serve. Participants in the panel are Carlos Ponce, Business Development Director at Tlantic; CEO of Infinite Peripherals, Jeff Scott; Gerber Technology Chief Marketing Officer Bill Grindle; and Craig Witsoe, CEO of Elo. The seven main topics on the table are…

• The current state of retail, and recent changes in effectiveness, including discussion of the recent mass closings by Macy’s, Sears, Kmart, Limited, etc.
• Where is the retail industry being pulled? If or when will a balance be reached between online and offline shopping?
• Customer experience: where is it failing, where is it shining, what can be done better?
• New retail technologies: how they will affect how shopkeepers and customers interact, both with each other and with products?
• What is going on with cybersecurity for the future of retail and loss prevention technologies?
• A discussion on using big data for marketing and sales, and how they interrelate with analytics, and how that is changing.
• A general discussion of innovation, and what is truly outside the box in retail right now.

References:

• In-Store E-Commerce
• Ralph Lauren starts testing interactive fitting rooms in NYC
• Amazon is opening a physical bookstore in New York City in 2017
• 4 Important Differences Between Multi-Channel & Omnichannel
• KPI
• Maker’s Row