BRP’s POS/Customer Engagement Survey Reveals Retailers Plans for Personalization, Mobilization, and Security

The term “Retail Apocalypse” has been thrown around a lot lately and it’s simply not true. The retail industry is just adapting to today’s expectations for customer engagement, but with so many traditional stores going the way of the Dodo, I can see how the misconception of retail’s demise could be validated.

Boston Retail Partners (BRP) released their 2018 POS/Customer Engagement Survey last month and it reveals insights about the ever-changing retail landscape that are important for any retailer worth their salt to consider. According to the report, “The goal was to gain understanding of retailers’ planned initiatives, priorities and future trends by contacting more than 500 top North American retailers.”

The four main pillars behind the meat of the report are as follows:

Personal – Engaging the customer through personalization and relevance.
Mobile – The pervasiveness and ease-of-use of mobile devices offers tremendous opportunities for retailers.
Seamless – Customer expectations for a personalized and seamless experience require retailers to follow customers’ journeys across channels.
Secure – Today’s retail environment requires security beyond retailers’ current focus.

Retail Wire thoughtfully pointed out that the silos throughout the retail industry are quickly crumbling and a broader perspective is necessary to successfully engage with today’s customers. “Disruption and adaptation are changing the customer engagement model and blurring the lines among retailers, brands and wholesalers. Unified commerce is the key to this retail transformation,” they reported.

Here are some of the top takeaways from the survey:

62 percent of retailers indicated that customer identification is their top customer engagement priority.
83 percent of retailers will suggestive sell to their customers based on their previous purchases within three years.
62 percent of retailers plan to increase their use of mobile devices for POS by the end of 2019.
42 percent of retailers will use customer-owned mobile devices as a POS within three years.
81 percent of retailers plan to have a unified commerce platform by the end of 2020.
91 percent of retailers plan to offer order visibility across channels within three years.
91 percent of retailers will have end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by the end of 2020.
61 percent of retailers will offer a single token solution across the enterprise within three years.