• by Todd Wasserman , January 18, 2023

The National Retail Federation 2023 show just ended in New York, with marketers keeping an eye on how retail might evolve in the next year or so. Here are some highlights:

Dynamic Pricing

The old system of pricing didn’t account for sudden changes in the cost of commodities. Retail media networks experimented with dynamic pricing in 2022, but the technology has improved enough that food retailers can begin to avoid having to dispose of one third of perishables because they’ve expired.

Imagine instead if retailers were able to discount such perishables. Likewise, clothing retailers can discount items that are losing value because of seasonal changes or overstock. Imagine if the next time you shopped at Old Navy, you saw an electronic price tag that discounted a shirt from $15 to $5. That new price might make you want to buy it, when you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Drones

The pandemic hastened the adoption of drones for delivery. Walmart currently uses drones for fast deliveries (under 30 minutes) and in China, Flytrex delivered more than 2.5 million parcels via drone.

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and founder of Coresight Research, predicted exponential growth in drones by mid-2024.

Retail Networks

Retail networks will make dynamic pricing more accessible. Among the retail networks at the show this year was the Microsoft Retail Advertising Network.

Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst for retail and ecommerce at Insider Intelligence, told Modern Retail that every retailer, in some capacity, is going to have to digitize their store operations over the next decade – “and they’re going to need help. Between Amazon and Microsoft, retailers are going to want to partner with Microsoft because it is not going to compete with them. And so Microsoft has a really significant role play here.”