For the last 12 months, US retailers have been riding the gravy train (24 months for grocery and mass merchants). Sales growth has been in the high double-digits in many sectors thanks to strong comparisons to early COVID months the year before, multiple rounds of government stimulus and consumers that […]
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In the last two years we have seen a once-in-a-generation jump in IT spend. In fact, in our latest study showed that benchmarked IT spend grew as a percentage of revenue as much as 40% since the beginning of the pandemic. General Merchandise Retailers (GMS) reported that they plan to […]
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Without question, the COVID pandemic has changed consumer behavior worldwide. Some of the changes have abated, others have further accelerated. IHL Group completed a worldwide study of consumers in 21 different countries to understand what shopping behaviors have changed for good, which are fading out, and how the future of […]
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Retail is experiencing a once-in-a-generation increase in IT spend due to the impacts of COVID and the change in shopping journeys for consumers. Although consumers have come back to stores, the digital increase is here to stay. Retailers must get these transactions profitable. Add to this the ongoing labor challenges […]
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There are many criteria that have separated the winners since the beginning of the pandemic, but there is one technology that winning retailers are rolling out in 2021 at a rate nearly 9.5x the rate of others. You would think it is a new technology like AI/ML or something specifically […]
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The proliferation of computing devices at the store, the increased use of computer vision, RFID, video analytics, self-service, mobile devices, and all other things IoT have pushed the limits of current retail infrastructure. Add to this a 750% growth in the use of microservices and retailers and hospitality establishments are racing to implement an edge-computing […]
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When it comes to the deployment of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in retail and hospitality, the question is not if they are doing it, but where and how fast they are adopting the technology. Now a couple of things. First, as we shared in our free white paper AI/ML […]
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