The nature of consumers’ digital spending has demonstrated a sharp change in priorities. In the main, these changes reflect common sense with both UK and US showing and logical shift away from non-essentials such as apparel (down by 15%) and luxury items.

One of the biggest shopping events of the year is nearly upon us, with Black Friday falling this year on 29th November. The day itself has an indeterminate past, but is often said to stem from America around the 1950’s. It was used to describe people taking a sick day from work, the day after Thanksgiving.

The aim of the first three steps to digitalisation is to alter the mind-set of your retail business to encourage the move away from a product-focused business model, to one that keeps the customer at the heart.

Using IoT in retail doesn’t only improve the customer experience, it drives the customer experience by giving businesses the opportunity to gain a better insight into their customer preferences and the opportunity to create a more personalised and interactive ‘shopping’ experience.

There is no single technology (“the web”) that will drive the change of the future. There is a mixture of technologies: AI driven Smart analytics, big data, mobility, social media, Internet of Things and smart embedded devices.