Adobe Opens Prototype "Store Of The Future"
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Beacons, RFID tags, and smart shopping bags among the new technology for shoppers.
Last week, Adobe launched its prototype “Store of the Future” in Las Vegas, equipped with technology including beacons, RFID tags, and a shopping bag that completes customers’ transactions.
Designed to showcase trends in brick-and-mortar stores inspired by online retailers, according to Fast Company, the store includes tracking items with RFID tags, offering real-time inventory metrics, and collecting analytics of customers. The lines between physical and online stores is blurring, with many shoppers turning to omnichannel options to make their purchases. But this muddling of the shopping experience presents serious channels for old-school brick-and-mortar retailers who struggle to keep up with consumer preferences. This new prototype is aimed at helping retailers overcome these obstacles by highlighting the latest trends to improve customer experience and satisfaction rates. The store is showing how brick-and-mortar retailers can build and use the kind of data that powers e-commerce.
Among the technologies Fast Company highlighted was the Smart Internet Connected Bags from tech startup Twyst, which take stock of any items customers put in them and charge a credit card as they exit. The bags immediately log what shoppers put inside them and relay that information to the store, offering an opportunity to upsell, delivering insights into buying patterns, behavior and dwell time; allowing the shopper to connect to store associates and offering a personalized concierge service; and giving shoppers control of their own in-store experience and frees up sales associates to enable more sales via better service on the sales floor. Customers also have the option of remaining anonymous.
"Retailers are using what is available to them," Michael Klein, Adobe’s director of retail industry strategy, told Fast Company. Many of the technologies also were on exhibit at recent trade shows such as the NRF Retail Big Show. They exemplify how brick-and-mortar retailers have been forced to adapt after almost two decades of losing market share to data-driven digital rivals like Amazon and eBay. Now retailers are using technologies such as RFID chips and beacons to create their own detailed data sets on everything from inventory and logistics to customer traffic patterns, helping give them some leverage over their suppliers and competitors.