10 Retail Trends To Watch

By Mick Adamson, VP, North America, iVend Retail

If there is a single, defining issue for the 2015 holiday shopping season, it’s whether retailers are able to provide a more cohesive shopping experience regardless of channels.

Below are the major trends reshaping retail that resellers should pay close attention to, and which will be on the minds of your customer base in the weeks and months ahead.

1. Omni-Channel. It’s the mega-topic to rule all other topics. How do you make every part of the customer experience consistent and complementary? The answer has at times proved elusive. For many retailers, the answer may be an investment in new technologies like mobile point of sale, loyalty management, inventory management, and digital passes.
2. Blurring Of Channel Lines. There was less buzz about the traditional “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” this year. There’s also more talk about how shoppers will use whichever channel(s) which work best for them, and perhaps most important — whichever is convenient. How will retailers and their reseller partners react to this year’s holiday shopping season? Five years from now, will we even be differentiating between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or just talking about the need for a consistent omni-channel experience across the post-Thanksgiving weekend?

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