Earlier this month, I joined dozens of industry leaders at Lenovo’s OEM Solutions Innovation Forum in Naples, FL, where I had the opportunity to talk and connect with retailer leaders, as well as software and hardware vendors, from across the country about cutting-edge solutions being deployed to improve the retail experience.
The Forum’s sessions covered strategies and technologies for advancing retail operations, ranging from utilizing customer data for marketing tactics to enhancing customer experience through self-service kiosks, as well as the evolving capabilities of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in retail design.
While attending the Forum, I spoke with a number of the top national retailers about trends they are seeing unfold in consumer behaviors, operational challenges, and the impact technology has had on personalizing marketing campaigns.
Three takeaways from the Forum:
1. Shifting consumer behaviors
We’ve all read the articles and seen firsthand how customer expectations and buying behaviors have changed since the pandemic. The rapidly evolving retail landscape continues to adapt to these shifting demands, pushing retailers to blend physical and digital experiences seamlessly.
Today’s consumers seek an experience that combines the best of both in-store and online shopping: they want to see, touch, and interact with products in person, but they also expect a wealth of information to be readily accessible to them, as it is online.
2. Device management
With the variety of digital touchpoints in today’s retail spaces, managing, deploying, and optimizing messaging for these devices efficiently has become essential.
A centralized portal for administering in-store screens, digital signage, and demo devices is no longer just a “nice-to-have” but a key component of the retail operation. By gaining insight into device usage and customer interactions at the store level, retailers are refining their in-store strategies based on data, enhancing both marketing and customer engagement. Additionally, tracking consumer engagements with devices has allowed retailers to allocate in-store resources more effectively, ensuring displays are operational and compliant at key moments in the consumer’s buying journey.
3. Operational challenges
In today’s highly competitive market, price changes are commonplace for many retailers. Manually updating prices requires a significant amount of time and effort from sales associates. With today’s leaner retail workforce, timely price changes are frequently overlooked or inaccurate; thereby negatively impacting overall sales and often leading to a negative customer in-store experience. Forward-thinking retailers are implementing automated pricing solutions that streamline the process, ensuring accuracy and enhancing the shopping experience.
While this was my first time attending Lenovo’s OEM Solutions Innovation Forum, I’ve worked alongside Lenovo’s team throughout the past year on building MPC’s 4” and 7” color digital touchscreen devices for retail environments.
Driving the future of retail together
As we continue collaborating with retailers, the Forum’s insights further reinforce the importance of delivering software and hardware solutions that align with the evolving needs of our partners and consumers’ expectations.
Over the years, we’ve worked with several major retail chains, electronics stores, and national wireless carriers who have shared similar trends to those listed above and turned to us to help them integrate digital and physical retail experiences that meet consumer needs and improve operational efficiency.
Read how our solutions helped one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies enhance their in-store experience for accessories and non-smartphone products.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chad O’Leary is the CEO and co-founder of Mobile Price Card (MPC). Founded in 2015, MPC first offered wireless retailer carriers software that digitized pricing; however, the company quickly expanded its offerings to provide software and hardware solutions that enabled national retailers to manage and unify all their in-store digital content in one platform. Currently, MPC’s solutions are used in over 20,000 locations across 30 countries.
Before co-founding MPC, Chad owned and operated multiple wireless retail carrier stores. In less than a decade, he grew an initial $15K investment into a multi-location business with over 50 employees and $14 million in annual gross revenue.