The Internet of Things in Retail: Redefining Brick and Mortar Stores
in hardware and installation costs by 2020 7. Widespread adoption of IIoT-R will be greatly influenced by business value and return on investment. Recent advances in low cost, low powered sensors and universal connectivity and the adaptability of connected sensors and devices is gaining traction. This creates compelling opportunities for retail companies to gain advantage in a crowded marketplace. According to study by Harvard Business Review 8, customers who had the best past experiences spend 140 % more compared to those who had the poorest past experience, which goes on to prove that customer experience is a major driver in future revenue. Retailers that outperform in this connected environment will be those that use the insights from the emerging technologies to not only improve their bottom line by optimizing their operations but also improve topline through increased footfall and conversions by offering differentiated and contextualized experiences to their customers.
We do not often associate retail with the Industrial Internet thinking it is more consumer centric than industrial. A perception that is reasonable since everyone has shopped at the store while only a fraction of the population works on the complex logistic, supply chain, marketing, branding, customer experience creation and sales operations portion of the business. As retail operations are dynamic, distributed and transactional based, organizations like the Industrial Internet Consortium( IIC) are building essential architectures and frameworks to achieving the new value potential of IoT technologies. Specifically the IIoT reference architecture, security architecture, analytic framework and business solution guidance brings together a cross industry approach to building IIoT systems such that vertical segments like Retail can begin to realize the potential of IIoT-R.
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7 Juniper Research, Retail Spend on‘ Internet of Things’ to reach $ 2.5Bn by 2020, July 2015,
http:// www. juniperresearch. com / press / press-releases / retail-spend-on-iot-to-reach-2-5bn-by-2020 accessed March 2016
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HBR Article – The value of customer experience quantified by Peter Kriss https:// hbr. org / 2014 / 08 / the-value-of-customer-experience-quantified accessed Jun2016
IIC Journal of Innovation- 25-