The Retail Customer Experience Is Not An Arms Race

don’t think anyone will argue with the idea that customer expectations are changing fast and that it is very difficult for retailers to keep up. But the problem is not limited to retail, as pretty much anyone serving consumers finds themselves in this expectation loop. If a consumer has a great experience with a banking app, for example, all of a sudden he expects every retailer to offer something similar in terms of a digital wallet. If you look back on the evolution of retail, it’s easy to believe that prior to the consumerization of technology and the rise of the internet, customer expectations of retailers did not evolve very fast at all. I’ve borrowed Scott Galloway’s line many a time, that if you look at most retail stores today, the most disruptive technology that has been introduced in the last 100 years (outside of computerized point of sale) is air conditioning and escalators. That beyond a few flashy screens in stores that don’t do much, the store experience of 2018 is effectively indistinguishable from the store experience of 1985. Read more at Forbes.