Retailers not ready for advanced mobile experience

Retailers are not prepared to support the next wave of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots and artificial reality (AR) as part of their mobile strategy, according to a survey by the WBR Insights division of Worldwide Business Research. Only 9 per cent respondents said they were able to support these features, while more than half (52 per cent) are not. The greatest barriers: budget (64 per cent), lack of internal resources (55 per cent) and the lack of executive buy-in (42 per cent)…

Walmart adds thousands of robots to its stores

Walmart in April announced adding thousands of robots to its stores. It expects autonomous floor scrubbers in 1,860 of its more than 4,700 US stores by February 2020 and will have robots that scan shelf inventory at 350 stores. There will also be bots at 1,700 stores that scan boxes as they come off trucks and sort them by department onto conveyer belts. Walmart claims these ‘smart assistants’ will reduce the amount of time workers spend on ‘repeatable, predictable and manual’ tasks in stores and allow them to switch to selling merchandise to shoppers and customer service roles.

Nearly 6000 shops closed by major retailers in UK in 2019

BRC hails UK Treasury Select Committee report

Retailers should enhance in-store experience

China’s retail sales of consumers goods up 8.2%

S Africa’s retailers vow to back domestic textile sector

Retail leasing in India dropped 35% in 2019

Under-performance, high rentals hit Indian retailers

McKinsey opens retail store

Management consultancy McKinsey & Co plans to sell women’s underwear, jewellery, deodorant and other products to better advise its retail industry clients. McKinsey opened its first brick-and-mortar concept store, called Modern Retail Collective, at Minnesota’s Mall of America, the largest shopping complex in the US.

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