Miya Knights On The Digitally Enabled Shopping Journey

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Every year, Innovative Retail Technologies publishes our Mobility Special Report, which takes a deep dive into the state of mobility in retail. In 2015, we partnered with Miya Knights, global research technology director at Planet Retail for our Mobility Special Report, in which she penned compelling content explaining why retailers must put the shopping journey and its delivery via mobile at the forefront of customer-facing strategic initiatives. Our readers devoured her insight, and as such, we partnered with Knights again for this year’s report. In her report, Knights details how mobile technologies enable meaningful customer experiences and how retailers must evolve to keep pace.

You’ll read two reports penned by Knights — the first tackles the state of mobile payments and the second educates retailers on how to harness the power of the consumer to create meaningful experiences. In her second report, The Era Of The Individual: Unleashing The Power Of ME,” Knights writes:

The in-store and online IT investment research demonstrates that mobile and digital technologies, with their ability to capture context and intent, have the highest average rates of deployment and planned investment among the retailers surveyed, regardless of country or size. Mobile app development, for instance, is the technology investment area that most retailers will use to drive insights and engagement across channels this year. In-store mobile app integration can enhance the physical shopping experience in-store, as well as online. Features such as wayfi nding, wish lists, or even coupon redemption and payment allow retailers to more easily track registered and logged-in shoppers throughout their shopping journeys, addressing the challenge of cross-channel visibility.

The next big technology in retail is whatever the customer’s using. For now, it’s the smartphone. Knights goes long on personalization, digitization of the store, and how engaging the individual leads to profitability. Be sure to download and read our 2016 Mobility Special Report and share it with your colleagues. Email me with ways your organization is using mobile to engage the customer.