What’s Trending In Retail

IKEA Place is a mobile app that allow shoppers to plant & view digitally rendered products in their own home.

ALIBABA + INTIME Shopping mall’s AR mirrors allows visitors to try on beauty products. Visitors can virtually test the makeup product and purchase through a vending machine.

Discover meals matched to your instagram Knoor’s

eatyourfeed

Walmart filed a patent for tech that will detect the emotional state of shoppers as they walk around the store. The technology uses video cameras and store checkout lines that monitor facial expressions and movements to determine varying levels of dissatisfaction. If the system detects an unhappy shopper, it will ping employees in other parts of the store and order them to report to a checkout register, in the hopes of alleviating consumers’ distress. According to a patent filing, the largest brick-and-mortar retailer in the world (likely looking for ways to compete with Amazon)

Consumers are concerned about automation-fueled unemployment. But never underestimate the human ability to feel multiple and contradictory things at the same time! Many of the same consumers worried about job displacement are already hunting out brands that harness automation to make their lives better.

Google Duplex will soon be booking haircuts for users around the globe

Target will begin to test a service that uses Bluetooth-connected household devices to monitor your supply of toilet paper, paper towels and hand soap, and automatically order more when you need it.

The subscription service is called Target Fetch, and Target will launch a campaign May 1 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to solicit 250 beta testers in the US for the service.

 

 

Large Banks Closing Branches In Favor Of Digital Wallets

 

JPMorgan launched a partnership with PayPal, bolstering both companies’ digital payment networks.

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), two global payments leaders, have announced a partnership that will make it easy to add Chase cards via Chase Pay to PayPal accounts, and will soon offer customers the option of paying with Ultimate Rewards points when linked through Chase Pay at PayPal’s millions of online merchants.

In addition, PayPal will have the ability to process payments on ChaseNet, a unique, closed-loop payment netwo

The most recent round of bank earnings provides a window into the shift to mobile services. Bank of America and JPMorgan both expanded their mobile customer bases by double-digit percentages versus a year ago.

FBI Alerts Parents On Toys With Cloud Backed Features

The FBI say, many toys sporting cloud-backed features such as speech recognition or online content hosting “could put the privacy and safety of children at risk due to the large amount of personal information that may be unwittingly disclosed.

“Security safeguards for these toys can be overlooked in the rush to market them and to make them easy to use,” the FBI warns. “Consumers should perform online research of these products for any known issues that have been identified by security researchers or in consumer reports.”

This comes after a number of kids’ toys were found to be indirectly spying on kids by collecting and storing data, including audio conversations and personal information, without parents’ knowledge.

Germany’s Federal Network Agency, or Bundesnetzagentur, has banned Genesis Toys’ Cayla doll as an illegal surveillance device.

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Innovative Technology Allows Consumers Access to Products Worldwide

Consumers are no longer limited to the product selection at their local store or even in their own country; Nearly sixty percent (57%) of global survey respondents have made an online purchase in the past six months from an overseas online retailer.

India is one country on the leading edge of the mobile trend. A few online retailers in India have moved from mobile first to mobile only. The shift toward mobile shopping is of course not just happening in emerging markets. In the U.S., IBM reported that mobile devices accounted for about 57% of all online shopping traffic this past Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the country, up 15% over the same period in 2014.

As technology and the retail landscape rapidly evolve, payment practices are also changing. More than half of respondents who say they shopped online during the past six months paid with a traditional credit card (53%), but roughly four-in-10 used a digital payment system such as PayPal (43%), debit card (39%) or direct debit from their bank account (38%).Cash on delivery is also popular in many other developing markets, including Nigeria (76%), the Philippines (73%), Russia (70%), United Arab Emirates (68%), Saudi Arabia (59%), Colombia (57%) and Thailand (56%). Consumers are looking overseas to purchase authentic foreign brands, often at lower prices than they can find in their home country.

Trend Forecast For 2015

 

Instant Skills-

Instagram created an army of instant art-photographers,

Seed Sheet– enables a gardener to identify which plant will thrive and which will not.

Palette’s Home–ensures that food is cooked perfectly every time

HEXO+ –take a selfie with a drone that follows you

Order Ahead with Mobile

Audi Unite-

m-payments- A recent study found that 45% of Millennials in the US & UK would like to use their mobiles to split bills with friends (JWT, October 2014).

The Internet Of Caring Things -innovations, such as Chinese tech giant Baidu’s set of smart chopsticks, which can detect the freshness of cooking oil.

Stir Kinetic Desk

Smart Bike Lock-Bitlock

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Volvo partnered with the Swedish Transport Authority on the EletriCity project to create roads that can charge electric vehicles. Features will include inductive charging that can wirelessly transmit power to the city of Gothenburg’s electric bus fleet.

Foodtweeks helps people looking to decrease their calorie intake. Users tell the app what they’re about to eat and receive tips to reduce the dish’s calorie content. If the user says they followed the advice, Foodtweeks then makes a donation of the equivalent number of calories to a local food bank. In November 2014, the service had partnered with 55 food banks in the US.

The Rise of Robots-Expected to free (human) employees from the most repetitive parts of their roles, and free them to focus on the more engaging, valuable tasks (that will further increase their satisfaction, and so ultimately that of your customers.  Düsseldorf Airport unveiled the world’s first robotic parking valet. Customers leave their car, and a robot picks it up and positions the vehicle in one of 249 dedicated spaces. The system connects to the airport’s flight database, meaning that customers find their vehicle ready and waiting for them upon their return.

Lowe’s is trialling OSHbot robot sales assistants in a California store. The robots have a 3D scanner to identify items bought in by customers and check if replacement parts are in stock. They are also programmed to speak English and Spanish, with further language options planned.

Japan’s, Nestlé are trialling a robotic customer service assistant named Pepper to help guide people through the Dolce Gusto and Gold Blend coffee brand product ranges. Trials started in December 2014, with plans to roll the robots out to 1,000 stores by the end of 2015.

Big Brother Is Watching Big Time

 

Next month the advertising industry in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane next month, plan to  employ new technology known as Anonymous Biometric and Objects Data Sensors (ABODS). Whereby, sensor cameras are placed behind or close to the screen frame of a digital billboard, biometrically sizing you up as you walk past.

ABODS will be able to tell your age range, sex and the color of your clothes. With this information, it will throw the ads at you that best fit your demographic.

If an advertiser wants to target a 20-something female, the first suitable passer-by will be served up an appropriately aligned ad. ABODS has already been trialed in a Melbourne shopping center and deemed a success. The sensors are very broad and can only capture age range and gender, but no personal information. The technology will be used in shopping centers, cafes and airports at first – the technology isn’t yet effective in larger spaces such as train stations, where too many people pass by too quickly.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/franchising/yes-big-brother-is-watching-20140207-325ln.html#ixzz2syds682R

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/franchising/yes-big-brother-is-watching-20140207-325ln.html#ixzz2sydOsjsa

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/franchising/yes-big-brother-is-watching-20140207-325ln.html#ixzz2syd0LQlL