5 key trends in Retail to impact the industry in 2024

Technology, equipment, and services are equally important in the Retail, eCommerce & FMCG industry nowadays as they are shaping the modern trends and moving the industries forward. Businesses dealing with logistics applications, delivery platforms and systems, and eCommerce sales automation need to be constantly up to date with the hot trends and key factors satisfying customers. Based on our experience from multiple projects in the retail and e-commerce field, we are happy to share some insights and our market observations.

We outlined five trends in retail that are important for every FMCG manager:

• Sustainability

What makes retail business sustainable today? Localism, collaboration, data sharing, as well as incentives and costs, are major factors to influence retail most, according to the Landsec research. For retail to be sustainable, consumers say it should provide local jobs and sell more local products.
As for collaboration, some retail brands see sustainability as core to their brand and are moving towards a holistic approach to sustainability that’s embedded throughout their businesses, including buildings.
Regarding data sharing, retail brands would like to get more data from landlords on services e.g. water usage, % sent to landfill, and recycling volumes. Over a fifth of Gen Z fashion shoppers would return less if the carbon-cost of sending items back was communicated to them, True Fit finds.
For incentives and costs, consumers care more about sustainable retail and retail brands can capitalize on this opportunity.

• Phygital (physical and digital) shopping

Phygital retail is also coming into the picture as a big trend for 2023. Phygital is an immediate, interactive, immersive, and hyper-personalized shopping experience combining the best of in-store and online shopping.
There is a lot of movement with physical retailers going to digital and digital retailers heading to physical stores. For example, businesses are increasingly enabling customers to create their own journeys during shopping experience. This includes:
Intelligent dressing rooms: These spaces allow customers to find their sizes virtually.
Utilizing influencers and live streaming: Companies report conversion rates approaching 30% – up to 10 times higher than in conventional ecommerce.

• Hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization is making its way to the forefront of retail. It includes personalized recommendations and tutorials tailored to specific shoppers. There is also a rise in businesses taking advantage of TikTok and the power of trending tutorials and how-to videos. This hyper-personalization makes shopping experiences feel unique and connects customers to your brand. To accomplish this, you need to know your shopper first. With a customer service platform, you can better understand consumer behaviors that impact inventory, staffing, support channels, and more when you integrate data from all your systems into easy-to-use reporting dashboards.

• In-store efficiency

64% of US online shoppers say product availability and store tidiness are important to them when shopping in-store. Many brands already understand that consumers aren’t ready to walk away from the high street. Great customer experience is still at the heart of in-store shopping – and in fact, all future retail trends. With shoppers eager to get back into brick-and-mortar stores after being stuck at home during the pandemic, retail store openings saw an unexpected uptick. The well-known retail brands worldwide opened new stores in 2023.
Overall, retailers in the U.S. have 522 planned store closures and 1,846 planned store openings for 2023, according to Coresight Research.

• Frictionless delivery

The concept of frictionless shopping is the idea of connecting buyers and sellers in a way that provides consumers with the ability to instantly find the products or services they need. Frictionless shopping means consumers are in control. As the concept has evolved, along with technology, consumers now expect to have this experience via their smartphones. According to consumer surveys, the following factors have also grown in importance for online shoppers:

• Loyalty points
• Good reviews from other consumers
• Special offers (e.g. buy one, get one free)
• Coupons/codes

The intelligent manner of achieving successful business strategy is by efficiently unifying rich customer-centric retail experiences within adaptive business software solutions. At the forefront of retail innovations with many new ways of buying goods, POS systems need to be updated. In line with the key retail trends mentioned above, Intelligent Systems offers rich expertise and know-how based on the latest software development technologies and experience from numerous implementation projects for retailers of any type and size.

Moreover, our solution has been developed in response to the latest trends in retail and reflect all business needs and challenges they are facing today.

Do you want to learn more about how we can support your retail business and help you stay in line with all the latest industry trends?
Call our experts