IDC Retail Insights: Worldwide Retail Experiential Operations Strategies

Retailers around the world now realize that sustainable competitive advantage will be gained only by those companies that integrate a deep understanding of omni-channel consumer needs and shopping patterns directly into their store operations planning and execution processes. Making the business case for continued retail enterprise technology and process improvements is essential to stay ahead of omni-channel consumer shopping needs. By elevating the customer and workforce experience (CX and EX), retailers can achieve higher service levels, reduce costs, and reduce risks, thereby creating a virtuous cycle that fuels loyalty, growth, and peak performance. IDC Retail Insights: Worldwide Retail Experiential Operations Strategies service examines the impact of technology investments and process initiatives on the customer experience, workforce productivity, risk management, and resulting enterprise performance. Specific coverage is given to the drivers, benefits, processes, use cases, and best practices related to connected, intelligent, and frictionless consumer and workforce engagement, productivity, risk management, and resulting enterprise performance.

This service collects relevant market data through in-depth interviews with industry experts, retail staff, and technology vendors, complemented by secondary research from conferences, publications, and third-party news sources. IDC Retail Insights' analysts develop unique and comprehensive analyses of this data, focused on providing actionable recommendations. To ensure relevance, our analysts work with subscribers to identify and prioritize specific topics to be covered in research reports.

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• Digital strategies to blend physical and virtual consumer experiences in the connected touch-free store
• Critical cloud-based and AI-driven retail modernization
• IT and process components of frictionless discovery, sales, fulfillment, and customer care
• Workforce transformation and task management
• Self-service and mobile-first retail engagement including 3D scanning technologies, kiosks, lockers, QR codes, and the convergence of virtual and physical spaces
• Multiscreen/multisensory digital interaction systems such as video, electronic shelf labels, digital signs, augmented reality (AR), AI-enabled discovery and voice, and chat
• Sensor-based technologies (RFID, loss prevention, and location-based technologies) and digital twins
• Video, video analytics (computer vision), and all of the associated use cases (cashierless checkout, traffic management, merchandising/inventory management, security, fraud and loss prevention, and risk management)
• Real-time, in-store engagement and operations such as IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality (VR), and metaverse
• How to be the retailer of the future with a guidance about digital transformation, customer experience, and technology investment planning

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. What are the challenges in extending retail business globally?
2. How can retailers ensure exceptional customer experience while improving all customer metrics (basket size, lifetime value, and the revenue and profitability of every transaction)?
3. How should retailers transform their organization to provide the best blended physical-digital experience possible?
4. How will retailers drive improved workforce performance and retention?
5. How can retailers lower their inventory expense while improving in-stock conditions and overall customer service levels?
6. How can retailers better align store assortment presentation to store-specific needs to improve performance?
7. What are mobile application best practices?
8. What critical steps must be followed to ensure high utilization of interactive digital and location-based services?
9. How can retailers lower their cost of operations while increasing customer engagement and performance?

The IDC Retail Insights: Worldwide Retail Experiential Operations Strategies service is ideally suited to support the needs of senior omni-channel, innovation, strategy, operations, marketing, and digital retail IT executives responsible for ensuring exceptional customer experience and responsive, efficient, and resilient operations. Suppliers to the retail industry focused on helping retailers improve customer experience and engagement, improve workforce productivity and satisfaction, and reduce operational risks will also benefit from this service.