Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.

RSR Research: Stores Say They Need More Knowledgeable, Tech-Enabled Employees

July 19, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
In RSR's just-released annual report on in-store technologies, The Customer-Centric Store 2010: How Retailers Engage Tech-enabled Customers, they studied how stores plan to contend with a smart phone-armed customer with more power in hand than any employee in the store. How should stores plan to contend with the legions of customers with smart phones?      [more...]

The future of self-service retail continues to be SELF-service, not store staff. Most of this discussion is seriously misguided, as if 100 years of failing to sell is now going to be rectified by training staff, when the shopper is already armed with their own personal selling assistant--the iPhone or its ilk.

The giant-killer retailer of the future will be the one who leverages the technology that shoppers are bringing into the store--and it is happening. Liz Crawford says: "Those shoppers who wish to use smartphones aren't going to be overly dependent on the associate anyway." Right ON!