What Retail Technology Needs To Do Next

The future of retail looks like this: A customer walks into a store and a sales associate says, “Welcome back. We think you’ll like this product.” The product offered is chosen not only by using the consumer’s prior purchases but also by the store’s intelligent software. The software knows the product’s characteristics (including style, fabrication, color, design, fit, etc.) match what the customer likes. The software is not using the kind of algorithm that Amazon uses to sell books (“customers who bought this also bought these other things”); it’s much more sophisticated than that. It works the way Spotify recommends new music. Spotify looks at the many characteristics of a song and identifies how it compares to other songs, making its recommendations highly personal, targeted and effective. Read more at Forbes.