Internet Of The Retail Market

The Internet has embraced the retail market and now it’s time for the retail market to embrace the Internet.  While the retail market has embraced eCommerce and the ability to purchase across channels, aside from retailers that have started recently and as an Internet based business, the large and legacy retailers have been focused on acquiring and implementing ‘bolt on’ features and functionality to enhance their eCommerce sales capabilities.  This strategy allowed the retailers to maintain sales and at least superficially support consumer demands to extend purchasing across channels.  Retailers have learned a lot during this time and the market has changed to incorporate eCommerce capabilities, these are all very positive improvements and the beginning of the a revolution in the retail market.

The changes continue to be driven by consumers and their embrace of technology coupled with the offering changes driven by Amazon’s expansion into new areas of the retail market.  The Internet of Things in the retail market will be driven first by Amazon and then embraced by consumers.  These changes will require retailers to implement a framework that supports both integration across technology practices and collaboration across partners and consumers.  The large legacy retailers have implemented a very strong suite of interactive capabilities supporting multi-channel demands as an initial reaction to the consumer demands and this gets them over the initial hurdle and now they must redouble the effort and change to truly integrate and support the market disruption.  

The first phase is the external manifestation of the Internet revolution and this provides some time for these retailers to focus on a robust and flexible foundation to take the capabilities to support the next level of demands.  The capabilities of the Internet of Things will drive the next revolution in the retail market by extending voice technologies on top of the mobile and wireless technologies into the consumer world to create a true Internet enabled omnipresent retail marketplace.

Unfortunately for large retailers, technology and the Internet of Things will only double down on both the changes and the rate of changes to continue to drive the market disruption.  The rate and velocity of change will only increase and this requires a componentized framework that supports enhanced collaboration and the ability to integrate new capabilities and technologies driven by consumer demands and experimentation.  The virtual and the physical retail outlets are merging with the Internet of the retail market and this requires implementation of both practices and technologies by the retailer to support a true single outlet supporting virtual and physical demands in the market.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?