It’s hard to get retail out of your blood after spending 5 years immersed in it, so I tend to stay in the know about how the retail sector is doing. After last week’s tough times on Wall Street, I guess it was inevitable that the panic about the holiday shopping season would follow. Same store sales numbers came out Friday for most stores and the results were pretty dismal. Yes, it may be a tough holiday season, but we’ll weather this like we have other tough years.
Instead of jumping on the speculation bandwagon, I find it more productive to read cool reports about the future of retail. Retail Forward, a market research firm for retailers, just released a cool report about what consumers expect the future of retailing to look like in 2015. It’s available on the website under Free White Papers and Research Studies: New Future in Store. Some of the advances consumers are expecting include:
- holographic sales assistants
- 3D body scans that help customers get the best fit
- Smart shopping carts that help consumers locate merchandise, access coupons and scan purchases
- Biometric payment by fingerprint
