DUBLIN, May 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- From false reports of the Retail Apocalypse to now the Retail Transformation., the holiday season brought retail back with a roar with overall sales up 4.9%. As an economy in the US, retail sales were up over $230b for the year ending 2017. What does that mean for 2018?

The "2018 Retail Transformation Study" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

In this collaborative study with RIS News you will see a view of what winning retailers are investing in for IT in 2018 vs. average or laggard retailers. How are changes in customer experience driving customer engagements and how retailers are fulfilling orders from various touchpoints? How many retailers are growing their business through Cross-Border retailing? How many are not only growing stores but growing the sales in those stores vs those who are simply accepting a lower sales per store? What about ecommerce growth, how much of this is expected to be desktop vs mobile? And finally, which emerging technologies such as AI, Machine Learning, Conversational Commerce, SDWAN, Beacons, IoT, Prescriptive Analytics, Big Data integrations and RFID are seeing growth in investment vs. declines?

With responses from many of the top retailers in North America, we have produced the results in a detailed, but very easy to read study. You also get the raw data to do your own analysis by segment.

The report is designed for use by Retailers, Hardware Providers, Software Providers, Service Providers and others who might have a vested interest in the North American retail market.

Highlights

Along with research study analysis your license also includes the raw data in spreadsheet form to do your own cross tabs. You can cross tab any answer to any other answer for unique insight.

We break down the data to find answers to questions that many in our industry are asking, like the following:

What do the IT Spend, Store Growth and Store Remodels look like for 2018?

What are the retailers' Top Store System Priorities?

How is Unified Commerce Driving IT Spend?

Where are Retailers Spending in the Cloud?

What emerging technologies are retailers serious about and which are just buzzwords at this point?

Which segments are looking to replace POS clients, POS Software, POS Printers, POS Scanners and EFT/Debit/Signature Capture devices? Will it be a good year or bad year for POS and peripherals?

Who is planning to deploy which Mobile Platforms and Applications, and when?

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/2brwfx/2018_retail?w=5

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Link http://www.researchandmarkets.com

Blog post by Robert Hetu, March 29, 2018

https://blogs.gartner.com/robert-hetu/2018-gartnerrisnews-retail-technology-survey/

I have provided the executive summary here, the full report can be accessed by all through a link at the end of this blog.

Executive Summary

Not an apocalypse, but an evolutionary event

In 2017, a healthy holiday season provided great relief for weary retailers. A strong economy lifted all, proving that traditional retail is not dead. People still shop, but their buying behaviors and lifestyle choices are changing. Amazon is not the asteroid that struck planet retail. Competitive pressures from disruptive, pure-play e-commerce players and new physical retailing models are causing radical changes to antiquated business models, driving down prices and driving up costs. Retailers are rightfully concerned about how to accomplish the herculean task of transforming a traditional, multichannel retailer into a digitally enabled provider of unified retail commerce.

For the second time we asked participants to indicate where their organization is placed on a scale ranging from having no digital strategy to harvesting results. The figure below compares the responses from this year and last and incorporates the results from Gartner’s 2018 CIO Survey, showing that there is a fairly consistent trend, but a slow march toward scaling and ultimately harvesting results.

Download your free copy of this report here:

https://risnews.com/2018-risgartner-retail-technology-study-wake-call-digital-transformation?from=gate

 Laura Wood, Senior Manager