By 2017, three times the current number of retailers will succeed in explicitly pinning their customer and operations strategies on 3rd platform technologies.
This is one of the findings from an International Data Corporation (IDC) report “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail Agenda 2015 Predictions”, designed to help IT leader capitalise on emerging market opportunities.
In 2015, CIOs will invest in omni-channel integration technologies as a top priority to support growth in the omni-channel shopper sales premium of 30%.
Over the next three years, half of CIOs across the top 250 retailers will adopt omni-channel IT governance fit for a 3rd platform era to combat shadow-IT.
By 2016 the top 150 retailers will improve ROI on hyper-personal loyalty based on unified customer engagement.
By 2018, 60% of omni-channel retailers will have launched customer mobile payment initiatives to enhance existing ecommerce, loyalty and store MPOS investments.
As cyber-attacks increase, by end of 2016 50% of the top 250 retailers will have reduced exposure and loss by more than 50% with intelligent sense and respond security strategies.
By end 2016 product intelligence (PI) will inform 80% of the top ten e-commerce retailers’ pricing decisions and drive mainstream adoption of high-velocity pricing.
By 2018, on demand socially networked delivery services (including Uber, EBay Now, Shutl, Deliv, Postmates, Instacart, Amason, Alibaba) will perform 90% of all intra-day direct to consumer deliveries.
By end of 2015 at least 25 retailers with location-based services will increase LBS-impacted same shopper sales by 5% via analytics driven agile engagement and operations.
By 2016, even as private brand growth flattens in the U.S., consumer driven private brand product innovation will drive a 10% improvement in customer visit frequency
“Relentless technology innovation underpins consumers’ participatory behaviour and expectations.
“The most successful retailers will find opportunities by putting mobility, analytics, cloud, and social to work in their customer and operations strategies, adopting omni-channel integration technologies and IT governance, unifying customer engagement for hyper-personalised loyalty, adopting product intelligence for marketing and competitive insight, employing location-based services via analytics driven agile engagement and operations, utilise socially-networked on-demand delivery services, and gain share with private label merchandise,” says Leslie Hand, vice-president of IDC Retail Insights.
