Many retailers are keeping an eye on emerging technologies.
There was plenty of that tech on display at the annual eTail East conference in Boston this week.
Following investments
in a few areas such as real-time marketing, retailers are looking at chatbots, IoT technology and beacons, based on a study released to coincide with the event.
The study comprised a survey of
550 leading retail executives conducted by IgnitionOne and Worldwide Business Research.
Top on the list of investments retailers are considering for next year is real-time or contextual
marketing. Here are the emerging technologies retailers plan to invest in next year:
- 38% -- Real-time or contextual marketing
- 34% -- Cross-device identification
- 34%
-- CRM onboarding
- 31% -- Chatbots
- 18% -- Internet of Things
- 13% -- Beacons
- 12% -- Virtual reality
- 11% -- Augmented reality
Based the
exhibits at eTail East, retailers will be seriously looking at various ways to capture and analyze data, with a heavy focus on artificial intelligence, as I wrote about here yesterday (A/B Testing Vs. AI Conversions).
Meanwhile, it looks like they will be spreading their
investment dollars across a wide array of connected technology.