Key Takeaways From Retail Technology Show 2024

There's a lot to digest from The 2024 Retail Technology Show .

After hearing from industry leaders and disruptors, we’ve identified three exciting factors rocking the future of retail innovation. 

The future of embedded finance

As embedded finance becomes more commonplace, retailers are exploring payment strategies to build deeper customer relationships throughout the CX journey and foster loyalty. 

We enjoyed a great talk from Andrew Ellis CEO at NatWest Boxed , and Joshua Fabian-Miller MD Digital Product, Strategy & Embedded Finance at Currys plc , who explored the potential of embedded finance to offer value-add services from initial purchase and beyond – from credit and savings options and insurance upon checkout to repair services post-purchase. 

An effective retail payment CX strategy addresses customer needs and pain points across their journey and has the potential to create deeper relationships with customers. NatWest Boxed and Curry’s discussed how BaaS can enable retailers to deliver ‘next-generation’ payment propositions, allowing them to maintain ownership of the customer journey. 

For retailers, the benefits are clear: the customer remains wholly within their own brand experience throughout the journey, and retailers can gather valuable data to better understand customer preferences and tailor services accordingly.

A focus on personalisation

Wouldn’t it be great if AI could predict what your consumers wanted before they even knew themselves? The topic of personalisation was central to many panel discussions, highlighting the role of AI and data in enabling retailers to customise experiences and services based on individual customer preferences. 

Retailers are understandably excited about the potential of smarter data capture and analysis to improve segmentation and be able to offer more personalised experiences. 

Personalisation (and customers’ expectations) will vary across different types of retailers – a personalised shopping experience tailored for repeat purchases will differ from one designed for more considered purchases, where exploration and research are more prominent. 

Hi Mum! Said Dad is currently running a survey across various consumer profiles to understand attitudes towards hyper-personalisation. 

One of the findings from our research is, that despite the benefits of hyper-personalised experiences, customers still value autonomy. While 71% of users welcome personalisation for enhancing their digital experience, 60% expressed concerns about losing sight of broader options – a sort of personalisation FOMO. 

Effectively striking this balance is crucial to unlocking personalisation’s full potential for retailers.  

The colleague perspective 

While customer-facing technology took up a lot of the discussion, we were also excited to hear more about retailers’ diligent work to harness technology for colleagues. 

A best-in-class customer experience starts with an engaged workforce who can do their best work through consolidated, easy-to-use back-office systems. 

PureGym is one retailer that’s been investing in technology to revolutionise the engagement and compliance of frontline teams. Raymond Hepburn , Employee Experience Partner gave great insight into their digital transformation journey – from disparate workflows and processes in multiple systems into one streamlined digital platform leading to operational efficiency, better performance and customer experience.