What The Big Retail Show In New York Means To Traders

This week’s Big Retail Show In New York is described as the worlds most important retail conference bringing major retail players from across the globe together - the likes of General Electric, Tommy Hilfiger, Alibaba, EBay, Myer, Macy’s, Woolworths, Coles, and so on.

And more than ever this year the emphasis has been on technology - technology that makes it more efficient for retailers to track and predict stock levels and technology that helps transform the customer experience, essentially by making it more convenient.

Much of the technology would appear to have little relevance to market traders. There are the cameras that follows the customers eyes to see which products they look at, watches as they pick up the product, and then records whether they take it or put it back. There are the robots that scan shelves to keep track of stock levels because that is something that humans don’t do very well. There are the data collection systems that enable retailers to track what their customers have bought and using that information to offer them new purchases. Your local supermarket probably does that already. Of course it could be argued that market traders who closely watch their customers in their stalls are able to do some of those things manually.

Assisting customers to find what they want in store is a major focus for global retailers and that has particular relevance for a traditional sprawling complex like QVM. Linking trader details on the QVM website with real-time trader locations (and map directions) is a current focus for our management team.

But the underlying philosophy for many of the major players at The Big Retail Show was quite clear - it is all about providing the best customer service, no matter where the customer is, and delivering the products to the customer, anywhere at any time. 

Relevant Forbes Articles: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevendennis/2018/01/19/retails-big-show-a-few-key-takeaways/#654f7f4a7f46
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahweinswig/2018/01/19/at-nrf-2018-retails-big-show-retail-technology-was-center-stage/#43f57cd966b1

Have Your Say - click here.