Retail News CRM

Tag: future

  • Is this the city of the future?

    Is this the city of the future?

    Today, more than half of our planet’s population live in urban areas, with millions of people migrating from the countryside to towns and cities in search of prosperity to a point where the world’s urban population has rocketed from 746 million in 1950 to 3.9 billion in 2014, according to the United Nations.

    As urban populations balloon, the strain on cities – many of them hundreds of years old – increases, with everything from transport to living space, healthcare and security put under pressure.

    In South Korea, the Songdo International Business District (Songdo IBD) is offering one vision of how cities might look in the future. A $35 billion project, Songdo has been developed across more than 1,000 acres of reclaimed land.

    “The original concept of Songdo was as a gateway city to the Korean mainland from Incheon International Airport, where basically all the uses – be they residential, retail, work, educational or cultural – would… all be within a 15 minute walking time of one another,” Jonathan Thorpe, senior EVP and chief investment officer at Gale International, part of the public-private partnership behind Songdo, told CNBC’s Sustainable Energy.

    As well as being technologically advanced, there is a heavy emphasis placed on sustainability. Forty percent of the city has been designated as “green public space” while the city is also home to 20 million square feet of LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – certified space.

    “The residents can… control their lighting, their heating, ventilation, air conditioning usage, all within a single panel,” Thorpe said.

    “Moreover, they can track the actual consumption of energy that they individually are consuming, compare that to the use of their neighbours and this helps, really, greatly increase efficiency,” he added.

    The importance of technology is crucial, according to renowned British architect Norman Foster.

    “In many ways technology has been a constant throughout civilization,” Foster told Sustainable Energy.

    “It’s always been maximizing the materials to transform the climate and create a more comfortable environment in an age before cheap energy,” he said.

    “We have to relearn those traditional lessons and apply that with the technology of our time. You have to look at all the elements within the building – the materials, the way in which it responds to climate – to reduce the amount of energy and ideally move to buildings which harvest energy.”

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  • Mumbai has highest potential for modern retail in India

    Mumbai has highest potential for modern retail in India

    Mumbai Metropolitan Metro has the highest potential for modern retail in the country at Rs 1.05 lakh crore, followed by Delhi-National Capital Region, which has total potential of Rs 77,900 crore, according to Knight Frank & Retailers Association of India’s ‘Think India. Think Retail. 2016’ report.

    Bengaluru is third in the list, with potential of Rs 48,600 crore.

    As part of the city-level analysis, the report has identified zone level supply-demand gap for apparel, F&B, entertainment and grocery across India’s top markets.

    It says the penetration of modern retail is set to increase from the current 13.5% to 50% by 2036 in Mumbai, from 26% to 50% by 2028 in NCR and from 24% to 50% in 2026 in Bengaluru.

    While the market potential of daily needs supermarkets and hypermarkets is pegged at Rs 58,800 crore in Mumbai and Rs 51,200 crore in NCR, it stands at Rs 24,300 crore in Bengaluru.

    The report says that modern retail penetration in India is extremely low at 19% compared to US, Singapore and China, where the figures are 84%, 71% and 63% respectively.

    According to the report, 69% of the total retail spending comes from Mumbai Metropolitan Region, NCR and Bengaluru out of the top seven cities in the country.

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  • Bluetooth Beacons – Malaysia’s Retail Future

    Bluetooth Beacons – Malaysia’s Retail Future

    Picture the following scenario: You walk into your favourite apparel store and your smartphone beeps with a push notification “Welcome back Linda! Only for today, we are giving you a 20% discount on all skirts”. You decide to finally get that blue skirt you have your eyes set on for weeks and decide to take a stroll through the accessories section when you stop to admire a particular necklace, after a few seconds of contemplation, your smartphone beeps again with the message “Hey Linda! Get a necklace to match your outfit, we’ll throw in a 30% discount on any necklace of your choice”. You leave the store with a new skirt and necklace at a bargain.

    You end up a happy customer, and the apparel store makes additional sales –  a win-win situation for all involved.

    The above situation may sound like a utopian future where the Internet of Things (IoT) have become a reality. However, the future is closer than we know it with the arrival of iBeacons by Apple in 2013 and Google unveiling Eddystone Beacons in July 2015.

    What Are Bluetooth Beacons?

    Beacons are transmitters which have the ability to sense nearby portable smart devices and “talk” to them via push notifications. Beacons are the most accurate form of locational based tracking device and may work with existing GPS and WiFi tracking capabilities to further enhance location tracking via triangulation.

    How Do They Work?

    Beacons use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) proximity sensing to broadcast universally unique identifiers (UUID) which are picked up by compatible apps and operating systems (OS). This means that users will need to have beacon-compatible apps (a relatively simple process can enable any app to be beacon-compatible) installed and have their Bluetooth switched on in order for their smartphones to interact with these beacons.

    Why Would Users Leave Their Bluetooth Switched On?

    This is a question which frequently surfaces during discussions with potential beacon adopters. It is true that a majority of smartphone users never and might even hesitate to turn on or leave their Bluetooth switched on due to the concern that the Bluetooth would contribute to a huge drain on their battery life.

    That is until 2011 when the new BLE technology were incorporated into the new iPhone 4S smartphones and subsequently, all smartphones released after that period. With the new Bluetooth Smart standard, worries of Bluetooth drainage on phone battery life were a thing of the past as the power needed to power Bluetooth is now so low that it is negligible.

    Other than that, most smart devices that are making their way into our everyday life such as smart wearables (e.g. Fitbit, Jawbone, Apple Watch), Bluetooth-enabled car audios, and smart kitchen appliances require the use of Bluetooth-enabled smart devices.

    With over 10,000 Bluetooth-enabled products listed with Bluetooth SIG along with the immense growth (>100% in 2014) of the Smart Home, Consumer Electronics and Beacons markets, coupled with the growing number of users coming to understand the new Bluetooth technology as well as the growing need of users to have Bluetooth-enabled to run their everyday smart lifestyles, 24/7 Bluetooth-enabled devices will soon be a lifestyle choice much like the 24/7 WiFi-enabled devices which are part of everyday life now.

    What It Means For Retail Businesses

    With the ability to understand what interests consumers and know when they are in the proximity, brick and mortar retailers can now interact digitally with potential customers to encourage more foot traffic into their outlets and achieve higher sales conversion by sending the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

    However, the use of beacons in retail businesses does not stop at pushing promotional messages and general information. With beacons, retailers are also able to provide a personalised shopping experience to each individual customer as seen in the aforementioned story above. Depending on the nature of the business, beaconised businesses will have a a plethora of uses for beacons such as, helping customers navigate a store and providing in-store concierge services by utilising the tracking abilities of beacons. Think shopping on Amazon or Zappos, but in real life.

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    The longer a retailer adopts the beacon technology, the more they will begin to understand their customers – who they are, what their preference is, where they like to shop, are they high or low spending customers. This is all possible as more and more data on these users are collected and analysed -allowing businesses to produce individualised ads and engage in behavioural retargeting.

    With the arrival of beacon technology, retailers with physical outlets will finally be able to gather data on their customers in real life in real time and run the most effective and efficient campaigns to target the most relevant consumer segments while providing a highly personalised shopping experience. The future of retail globally, especially here in the South East Asian region and in Malaysia, is in beacons and any retailer slow to adopt this breakthrough tech as part of their arsenal will be at a huge disadvantage moving into the future.

  • Sussan Group CEO Naomi Milgrom says no more bricks and mortar

    Sussan Group CEO Naomi Milgrom says no more bricks and mortar

    Australian retail needs to reinvent the shopping centre, prepare for more of the world’s biggest retailers setting up here, and bridge the gap between bricks and mortar and the “mindblowing” experience of online, says the boss of Australia’s largest privately held specialty fashion retailer.

    Naomi Milgrom is the owner, chair and chief executive of the Sussan Group, which owns the Sportsgirl, Sussan and Suzanne Grae brands, and is one of Australia’s richest women.

    She said Australian retailers needed swift change as the falling dollar lifts import prices, newly arrived international retailers take market share, and amid gloomy predictions about the future of US shopping centres. With more than 500 stores, Milgrom said she didn’t want to open any more.

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