17 Industry Experts Forecast Top Trends, Tech and Strategies as Retail Resets

Four key themes emerged in the 2021 Outlook Guide contributions from our distinguished panel of retail industry experts:

• The COVID-fueled ecommerce surge will continue even after the pandemic recedes as the flood of new customers discover the benefits of online shopping;
• Last-mile innovations (including BOPIS, curbside pickup and stores operating as micro-fulfillment centers) will continue to be first-order priorities for both consumers and retailers;
• Key technologies to watch will include order management, edge computing, IoT, livestreaming, contactless/frictionless checkout and heavily data-driven prescriptive analytics; and
• Even as store counts continue to shrink, brick-and-mortar will remain critical to omnichannel retailers’ strategies. However, their operations and the customer experiences they offer will have to adjust to consumers’ new priorities.

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