Tech Trends That Impact Retail in 2021

We know you love discussing technology trends just as much as we do. It’s exciting to observe how digital transformation changes traditional behavior patterns, inspiring companies to seek more new approaches for the sake of customer loyalty.?

Technologies are still the biggest helper. Retail companies that adopt new trends and integrate technological advances in their workflow achieve greater results. Let’s discover how it happens in 2021 and what retailers should consider for further evolution.

Automating the Last-Mile Delivery With Robots

The COVID-19 outbreak and further forced distancing have caused increased investments in robotic delivery, primarily for food and medicines. Customers still don’t want to wait long, despite the pandemic restrictions, and delivery robots are aimed to find them not only at the addresses given but with just a snap showing a location.

Originally used for carrying food at student campuses, robots draw the attention of both the retail and tech market participants. Companies like Nuro, Starship Technologies, Amazon, and Eliport are working on bringing shopping to our homes. Much remains to be done since delivery robots are expected to move in unorganized environments with pedestrians and other unpredictable factors. Nonetheless, the trend is one of the most claimed by customers and businesses.

Artificial Intelligence in Inventory Management

The digital transformation and shift to e-commerce could have changed everything but the customers’ determination to get what they want when they want it most. However, in some e-commerce channels, customers receive only 80% of what they initially ordered online.

AI-based solutions apply demand prediction models and act on the predictions. The new approach in inventory management is based on the analysis of customer demand, supply and production orders, economic order quantities, and other data. According to The State of AI in 2020 McKinsey report, 72% of supply chain management teams that adopted AI saw an increase in year-to-year revenue.

Interactive Retail Displays

65% of consumers are visual learners, which makes retailers think about product visuals. In 2021, it’s not enough to publish fancy images and decorate windows. Customers are ready for interactive displays.

Static images don’t reflect all the necessary product details that are important for the online customer to make a decision. Therefore, brands adopt 360-degree pictures, videos, and AR elements to demonstrate their products in real life. Such solutions may take various forms - shopping apps connecting online experience with brick-and-mortar stores, in-store tablets, and smart mirrors. In general, the interactive display market is expected to reach a worth of $35.03 billion by 2027,? compared to $20.34 billion in 2020.

Customer 360

Retailers actively gather customer data to make their offers more personalized. The problem is that the data comes from different sources and often looks fragmented despite its huge amounts.?

According to a survey, 45% of respondents expect to achieve a unified view of their customers with the help of technologies. The concept of such a single view also got the name of Customer 360. The new solutions like Integration Platforms as a Service are aimed to overcome data silos and integrate disparate apps and APIs. As a result, retailers will get a customer golden record and build loyalty on a new level.

Microservice Architecture

A successful business looks like a mechanism that consists of smoothly running separate parts. Can such an approach work in terms of software systems? The answer is obvious when we notice the shift from a monolithic architecture to microservices.

The microservice architecture allows retail businesses to delegate business functions to different software providers without changing the rest of the system. The small services run their processes separately so that you can select the best tools for each function and easily scale up the whole system. The global microservices architecture market is expected to reach $8,073 million by 2026.?

Biometric Payments

The digital community is worried about safety issues. Considering e-commerce, cybercrime here jumped 50% in 2020. In response, the market giants have introduced biometric payment systems. They authenticate the user on the basis of his or her physical characteristics and authorize the payment.

Biometrics may take several forms. Amazon has introduced a palm-scanning payment system,? Sberbank has launched facial recognition, and Crédit Agricole has provided fingerprint cards. Which solution will prove itself as the safest one? Time will tell.

What Is Happening to Your Retail Business?

We hope that our list of tech retail trends gives you something to think about. The most interesting part is experimenting, though. That’s why Fively helps businesses to verify and implement new ideas. So, if you’re looking for an open-minded and trustworthy tech partner, we have something to talk about.

We would also like to know your stories. What kind of technology trends are you adapting to your business? Would you like to try anything new?

Let’s share the current challenges and ideas to improve retail processes in the comments.