With 72% of retailers surveyed in a recent Retail Systems Research report saying they have IoT-related projects already underway, we are likely to see the impact of IoT in retail sooner rather than later.
In a recent article by Melanie Nuce, Vice president of apparel and general merchandise at GS1 US in Supply and Demand Chain Executive, she some indicators that point to the retail industry as a driving force of IoT’s success.
One of these is the ability to track individual items using Radio Frequency Identification or RFID.
We are already seeing examples of IoT like retail environments that leverage RFID for more integrated shopping experiences fueled by real-time data.
In fact, Reality often visits the Rebecca Minkoff stores during our regular Digital Retail Experiences Walking tour, which showed tracking individual products in the store. View this video from Craig Martin who explains this further.
Though RFID will be one of the foundational technologies for IoT, the whole connected environment instore through sensors, digital signage, and other technologies will help drive this forward.
Another is the large amount of potential to automate manual processes in retail. In fact, recent Cisco research on IoT found that 48 percent of retail industry business processes could be automated in the IoT world. As Melanie points out, this paints a completely new picture of the customer experience. The ability to offer personalized and contextual interactions will increase, and provide retailers with long-term gains.
All of this suggests retailers can’t ignore innovating with IoT in retail applications.
