Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. The Morgan Plus Six has a downsized, turbocharged engine and paddle-shift gearbox. It has electric power steering, LED running lights, a digital speedo and a Sport Plus mode. It even has remote central locking and puddle lights under the doors. A truly modern Morgan, then? Well, let’s not get carried away…
Regular readers may recall that, exactly a year ago, I took a road-trip in the final Morgan Plus 8. First launched in 1968, this rambunctious roadster once held the title of Britain’s fastest accelerating car. However, after BMW called time on its throaty but oh-so-thirsty V8, a re-think was required. After 51 years, Plus 8 was succeeded by Plus Six (now a word rather than a numeral). At £77,995, it’s Morgan’s new flagship sports car.
As per its name, the Plus Six is powered by a six-cylinder engine, again sourced from BMW. The 3.0-litre ‘B58’ unit usually resides in the Z4 M40i, along with the Toyota Supra. With 340hp and 369lb ft of torque driving – and occasionally spinning – the rear wheels, it serves up 62mph in 4.2 seconds. Crucially, it also ekes out nearly 40 miles per gallon in official tests. The Plus 8 struggles to halve that. (READ MORE)
The new year has not been kind to retail stores around the country, as the trend of accelerating store closings continues, according to a report by Yahoo! Finance.
Macy’s, JCPenney, Papyrus, Express and Pier 1 Imports, among other retailers, have reported 1,218 closings this year already, according to data from global marketing research firm Coresight Research.
Last year, 9,200 stores closed, including locations like Payless ShoeSource, Fred’s, Gymboree and Charlotte Russe. There were also widespread closures by Family Dollar, Forever 21, Charming Charlie, Sears, Kmart, A.C. Moore and GameStop.
This will be the fourth year in a row that retailers will shutter 100 million square feet of space, which equals about 562 Walmart supercenters.
“This year will generally be more of the same,” said Robin Trantham, a consultant for real estate data tracker CoStar. “We expect many companies – and many sizable companies – to announce closures.”
While the beginning of the year normally sees a number of closures after the holiday season, the sheer number and breadth signify a problem that goes deeper than business as usual.
For example, Pier 1 Imports will close almost half of its stores, up to 450 locations. Schurman Retail Group is closing 246 stores, which includes Papyrus and American Greetings. Express, a fashion retailer, will close 91 stores, including 31 by the end of this month and 35 by the end of January next year. Macy’s is closing 29 locations and JCPenney is closing six. Bed Bath & Beyond will shutter 60 stores as well.
The new year has also seen a decline in foot traffic. It fell 4.9 percent this week compared to the same period last year – and it was already down 1.4 percent from the previous week.
Morgan Stanley Research Analyst Kimberly Greenberger said that the second half of 2020 is expected to be especially challenging with the looming election, which could spook spenders.
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Featured PYMNTS Study:
With eyes on lowering costs to improving cash flow, 85 percent of U.S. firms plan to make real-time payments integral to their operations within three years. However, some firms still feel technical barriers stand in the way. In the January 2020 Making Real-Time Payments A Reality Study, PYMNTS surveyed more than 500 financial executives to examine what it will take to channel RTP interest into real-world adoption. Here’s what we learned. (READ MORE)
In 2020, the retail industry will be shaped by emerging technologies that will change the way consumers interact with brands, while retailers will collaborate more than ever with tech startups to future-proof their businesses.
Our top 10 retail tech trends for 2020 are:
Autonomous last-mile delivery robots will gain more traction.
Data privacy will require a more conscientious and collaborative approach as retailers walk a tightrope between data privacy and personalization.
E-commerce growth will boost the use of robotics to create fully automated shipping warehouses.
Retailers will push the consumerization of healthcare, especially as it relates to aging.
Environmental concerns will drive a proliferation of sustainable fashion initiatives and partnerships.
Reality tech will continue to blur the line between digital experiences and reality.
5G will finally be rolled out commercially, enabling technological advancements across the board.
Voice tech development will become more brand-oriented.
Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and digital payment solutions will see exceptional retailer adoption and growth.
On-demand product customization and 3D printing will lead a boom in personalized offers.
2020: A Year of enhanced customization and sustainability
In 2020, the retail industry will be shaped by emerging technologies that will change the way consumers interact with brands, while retailers will collaborate more than ever with tech startups to future-proof their businesses.
The consumer is at the center of technological innovation, as retailers struggle to keep the attention of hyper-connected consumers and to keep up with fast-changing expectations. Retailers will increasingly rely on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to enhance the customer experience, while improved automation will boost supply chain efficiency. With the steady increase in competition, large retailers and brands are increasingly recognizing the enormous potential offered by highly specialized startups. Enterprises will continue to invest in startup technologies to sharpen their competitive edge.
We’ve highlighted the top 10 tech startup trends for 2020 that we believe will enable retail to become stronger and better equipped to meet fast-changing consumer demand, to better understand consumer behavior and to create increasingly customized offerings.
1. Autonomous robots will gain traction in last-mile delivery
Investment in autonomous last-mile delivery solutions will increase in 2020, with large industry player acquisitions and partnerships, as well as venture capital investment. The need to improve delivery efficiency and reduce logistics costs will power the development of more advanced and cost-effective aerial delivery drones and ground delivery solutions.
More robots will be trained to recognize objects by their semantic (natural language) labels, giving them a sense of what things are, in real-time, as well as being able to interact with customers. MIT engineers, for example, created a navigation method that enables robots to plan out a route using semantic terms, such as “front door” or “garage,” rather than coordinates on a map.
With further advancements and lower costs, we expect to see wider adoption of robotic and drone last-mile delivery solutions. We also expect AI to play a larger role in streamlining delivery operations in 2020 to reduce distribution costs and streamline last-mile delivery. Startups and larger, more established retailers are developing solutions for autonomous-based last-mile delivery, including:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
Aerial delivery drones will finally see more use, led by Amazon, UPS, Uber, and Google’s Wing. Major retailers are also investing in drone technology for last-mile delivery.
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
2. Data privacy will require a more conscientious and collaborative approach as retailers walk a tightrope between data privacy and personalization
The introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are ushering in a new era for retailers. Most companies do not track the data they collect or where it’s stored, which worked well before but may not work with the new regulations. This increases the risk of privacy violations, regulatory action, security incidents and customer backlash.
Retailers will have to implement new policies to comply with the new regulations and most importantly support the new policies with technologies that safeguard customer data while also ensuring it can be leveraged for useful insights.
Enterprises across the world are increasing investment in data compliance, privacy and governance: The data privacy market is forecast to be worth $158 billion by 2024, according to Market Research Engine.
In 2020, we expect to see more retailers and brands introduce data privacy practices in collaboration with startups.
These are some companies to watch:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
The increased limitations on harvesting consumer data also mean contextual marketing—which thrives on consumer engagement based on real-time behavior—will have to shift data collection to be less invasive. We expect more solution providers to offer more data collection tools to comply with these new requirements while also delivering results.
Anagog, an Israeli startup, uses smartphone sensors that offer retailers insights into customer activities, whereabouts and context. By building customer behavior profiles, Anagog’s Edge-AI technology helps retailers better understand the customer’s lifestyle and routines, in real-time. Then, it provides highly personalized and contextual offers. Its AI engine runs on the mobile device itself, enhancing user privacy because there’s no need to transmit data to a central server, so no private data leaves the phone without the customer’s permission. Skoda is one of its main clients.
3. E-commerce growth will drive adoption of robotics in logistics
In 2020, robotics will significantly enhance the speed and efficiency of operations, boosting productivity, enhancing the consumer experience and delivering more accurate and reliable results. Sales of logistics robotics (the most significant application in retail) increased 53% year over year to $3.7 billion in 2018 (latest), according to the International Federation of Robotics.
Warehouses are central to supply chain management, and some of the most exciting innovations in the field focus on making them smarter. Innovations in robotics are optimizing and automating the storage, packing, and flow of goods within warehouses, making the flow of goods more efficient. Amazon has greatly benefited from robotics, lowering operating costs by 20% in recent years and creating a 50% gain in warehouse space due to more efficient use, according to Business Insider.
Source: Wolfe Research
Retailers are already implementing robotics in daily operations, often in collaboration with technology firms.
These are some companies to watch in 2020:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
4. Retailers will push the consumerization of healthcare, especially as it relates to aging
Retailers will increasingly push into healthcare products and services in 2020 and beyond. products and services that address the health effects of aging. Retailers are already integrating healthcare products and services into their businesses, which not only helps diversify revenue streams but also offers new ways to attract shoppers to the store.
Both CVS and Walgreens are planning to remodel stores over the next few years to create more room for healthcare products and in-store clinics. Other examples include:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
2020 will likely see more activity in this space as the majority of millennials cross into their thirties and start families of their own. Startups innovating around fertility and reproductive health have raised a lot of venture capital. Here are some examples:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
5. Environmental concerns will drive a proliferation of sustainable fashion initiatives and partnerships
More companies will focus on sustainability as consumers increasingly embrace environmental issues and look to brands to follow suit. We’ll see more sustainable products, services and processes.
The apparel industry is now said to be the second-largest polluter in the world, beset by energy-intensive processes, high water consumption, use of non-renewable resources and general excess. In the last 15 years, the industry has doubled production, but the average length of time an article of clothing is worn before being discarded plummeted 40%.
According to global non-profit organization BSR, 93% of global consumers want to see more of the brands they buy from support environmental issues, and three of four teenagers want to buy more sustainable products. Many retailers are already working on sustainability initiatives.
To cut waste, some companies have introduced initiatives focused on recycling and reuse:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
Startups will continue to disrupt the industry with innovative, sustainably based approaches to retail manufacturing.
Some startups to watch include:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
6. Reality tech will continue to blur the line between digital experiences and the real world
Retailers will increasingly rely on extended reality to engage customers browsing products. Virtual models of the human form, either created through 3D technology or otherwise, will progressively guide purchasing decisions. Innovative practices will continue to disrupt the industry with various approaches to retail operations, including:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
In 2020, the extended reality space will allow more consumers to share their VR shopping experience with friends. A growing number of companies will create 3D environments and experiences to establish increased immersion spaces. Real estate and travel already use 360-degree videos, and we think they will become more prevalent in retail in 2020.
Collaborations between technology companies and brands and retailers will intensify in 2020.
Here are some existing collaborations:
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
7. 5G will be rolled out commercially, boosting digital retail
5G technology, the fifth generation of mobile connectivity, is expected to bring faster speed, higher capacity, greater responsiveness and better dependability. This major upgrade in the network will allow companies to improve e-commerce operations and increase the efficiency of in-store technology, generating higher sales conversion.
The advent of 5G in 2020 will reduce barriers to entry, as processes shift to the cloud and smartphones are able to serve as AR devices. This will greatly boost AR technologies and further increase pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers to keep consumers coming back with experiential benefits.
The widespread use of 5G technology will also enable shoppers to browse websites faster, shop on the go more seamlessly and engage in more personalized online experiences. Adobe says there is a relationship between connection speed and online conversion, and predicts increased network speeds will generate an additional $12 billion per year for US online retailers by 2021.
Source: Adobe Analytics
The introduction of 5G networks will allow e-commerce apps to use more data intense programs using AI and machine learning, as well as a higher reliance on AR and VR.
5G connectivity will also enable new applications such as tactile Internet, the ability to emulate the sensation of touch through connected devices, potentially creating features such as shoppers being able to feel fabrics through a connected device.
House of Holland fashion designer Henry Holland worked with UK network Three to create “a living room of the future,” offering an immersive experience at the network’s central London store on Oxford Street. The new set-up includes mindfulness experiences offered through 5G connections, a spaceship gaming battle and a shopping experience.
Nokia will power Swedish telecom Telia’s 5G network at the new Mall of Tripla shopping center in Helsinki, part of the city’s smart city project. The 5G network will deliver next-generation connectivity throughout the three-block urban shopping mall and business center, enabling retailers to implement novel retail applications and lifestyle experiences.
8. Voice tech development will become more brand oriented
The expansion of virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant are changing the way we interface with the digital world. In 2020 retailers will use audio tech more: Innovation in audio advertising, sonic logos and branded podcasts are a few of the options available.
Harrods uses a podcast to bolster its digital presence, engaging potential customers to explore what luxury means today. Although part of its digital growth strategy, it also expands the company’s potential customer base.
Lululemon runs audio ads varying between 15 and 30 seconds in length via Amazon Alexa (to users who don’t subscribe to ad-free Prime).
NPR and Edison Research’s Smart Audio Report shows the number of devices in homes increased 78% in 2018 from the prior year, while Adobe’s latest State of Voice Assistants report indicates 32% of consumers now own a smart speaker, up from 14% in January 2018.
Source: NPR/Edison Research
Despite its growth, voice assistant technology is still a largely untapped resource with tremendous potential. A recent study by OC&C Strategy Consultants forecasts global voice commerce sales to rise to about $40 billion by 2022 from just $2 billion today.
2020 will see an expansion of voice shopping in the retail sector.
Mmuze is extending voice shopping to grocery retailers, allowing them to compete directly with Amazon’s Alexa voice-based grocery shopping. The Israel-based conversational artificial intelligence company offers online grocery retailers a platform that provides a natural conversational experience. Mmuze’s platform-agnostic solutions already power cross-channel commerce for leading online retail brands, including ASOS, Perry Ellis and US Polo.
Nike’s digital performance expert Nike Coach uses Google Assistant to chat with shoppers to help them find sneakers. It also uses Apple’s Siri voice assistant to tighten and release laces on Nike’s new Adapt Huarache sneakers, while Nike’s FitAdapt software and Nike Adapt app also turn the shoes into another voice-controlled Internet of Things device.
1-800 Flowers became one of the first retailers to use Samsung’s Bixby to enable voice shopping, and to pay with Samsung Pay, in early 2019.
9. Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) and digital payment solutions will see exceptional growth
Digital banking will finally take off in the west, catching up with a trend that started in China years ago. Digital payment solutions will primarily focus on:
Enabling phone or smartwatch purchases.
Establishing ecosystems that unlock customer insights and forge loyalty by providing convenience, value and security.
Implementing facial recognition.
Allowing for more seamless, convenient, fast, and secure transactions.
Retailers are gradually adopting digital payment systems: 7-Eleven, Target and Costco all introduced mobile wallets as payment options in 2018.
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
BaaS companies such as Marqeta, GreenDot and Metabank will disrupt retail with services such as advance pay for employees, co-branded debit cards and other innovative payment methods.
Source: Company reports/Coresight Research
Digital payment solutions have found a powerful strategic partner in the automobile industry. Auto manufacturers are dropping digital wallets into cars, which then fuels further changes in consumer behavior.
Honda Motor introduced Honda Dream Drive, which uses the car’s onboard infotainment display to enable payments at drive-through restaurants, gas stations, smart parking lots and grocery stores. BMW, Ford Motor, General Motors, Hyundai and Volkswagen have also announced they will offer in-car payment technology.
These integrated wallets will greatly facilitate transactions, radically changing behavior and engagement. They will also facilitate retailers’ ability to gather data, understand behavior and create a one-to-one relationship, especially when combined with analytics, AI and geolocation.
10. On-demand customization and 3D printing will lead a boom in personalized products
2020 will see a greater push for mass customization, underpinned by digital design and automation. Hyper-connected consumers, keen on instant gratification, are driving the shift from mass manufacturing to scaled personalized production, making personalization the top success factor for customer and prospect engagement. Retailers can produce a richer variety of goods based on consumers’ individual design tastes with the same efficiency as mass production, allowing every shopper to become a market of one.
Consumers also want apparel that represents who they are and the fact that they share everything online, offering a potential goldmine of information for designers who can adjust production to match what customers actually desire. For manufacturers, the challenge is in catering to the demand for personalization at a faster pace and on a greater scale.
Lectra, a fashion retail software company, has created two solutions to meet demand for faster turnaround on personalized items. Cutting room 4.0 combines a cloud-based data hub that connects product development offices with a single-ply cutting machine that offers a 360-degree view of the whole process to create a full cutting line with systems able to communicate with each other. Its Fashion On Demand technology is designed as a comprehensive personalization solution with a 360-degree view of the process to streamline multiple production processes and manage complex individual demands.
Personalization of specific clothing items offers a unique one-of-a-kind look for the customer’s wardrobe while also extending the lifetime of the piece.
Despite all odds, Tesla’s ascension continues with the shattering of another record. On Wednesday, the electric automaker’s stock prices surged so high that it reached a valuation of $100 billion dollars—making it the first publicly traded U.S. carmaker to surpass that high mark.
This news means Tesla is officially worth more than General Motors and Ford combined—despite both auto giants century-long head start Elon Musk’s industry disruptor, according to Reuters. Share prices have more than doubled over the last three months and the trend continued when their value increased by 8.1 percent to $591.78 on late Wednesday morning. Less the month ago, the same shares were going for $420 apiece.
Such a rapid rise can be attributed “to the inflection in electric vehicle demand globally,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in an email to Reuters. “The skeptics have been proven wrong, and the $100 billion market cap is sending the bears into hibernation mode.” Expanded production in China certainly hasn’t hurt things.
Though other manufacturers are beginning to introduce a more robust selection of electric car options––like Ford and its forthcoming line of electric Mustangs––they have been slow to respond to increased customer interest. Whatever their reasoning, Tesla was able to effectively capitalize on what was essentially a competitor-less category and is reaping rich rewards for it despite a recent series of embarrassing missteps.
Two years ago, Musk teased taking the entire venture private after acquiring funding but shied away after concerns about regulation and investors surfaced. It appears the company took the correct route.
A fringe benefit of its towering price tag is that it could make it easier to attract talent to its ranks. That’s becoming an increasing challenge for California-based companies as scores of them fiercely compete to recruit the best talent from a relatively small geographic area.
Musk’s personal pocketbook won’t be shrinking any time soon either. The newly minted market value gets the entrepreneur significantly closer to a $346 million payout, a figure so unprecedented that it’s the subject of a current lawsuit. But given how lucky Musk has been lately, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him win that battle, too. (READ MORE)
GM’s Cruise is launching the Origin electric autonomous vehicle and sliding doors today, the product of 3 years of work between General Motors, Cruise, and Honda. The Cruise Origin is designed without a combustible engine or a driver, decisions which Cruise CEO Dan Ammann says give people more space. The Origin can seat up to 6 people, with 3 passengers on each side looking toward each other in the rear-wheel drive vehicle.
The vehicle also comes with air bags, “Start Ride” buttons, an SOS button, and a camera on the roof of the interior, presumably to deploy computer vision models that can do things like analyze the sentiment of riders. VentureBeat reached out to Cruise for more details on how each of these interior features works.
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No price, production date, or production location were shared at the event held in San Francisco, which ironically took place in part in an old Honda dealership. The news was shared alongside the company’s continuing vision of a future where cars are autonomous, people no longer own vehicles, and all cars are electric so that the world sees fewer vehicle deaths per year, less pollution, and less wasted time.
Above: Cruise Origin interior
Ammann claimed that vehicles like Origin will save the average San Francisco resident up to $5,000 a year, and will be able to operate day and night for up to million miles over the lifetime of a vehicle.
Cruise chief engineer on the OriginJason Fischer declined to share details about the kind of permit that may be used to operate the vehicle but said the vehicle is below 10,001 pounds.
Cruise first introduced the concept of a Chevy Bolt with no steering wheel at CES in 2018. Any vehicle without things like steering wheels or gas and brake pedals must meet SAE Level 4 standards to operate on some public roads.
Above: The interior of the Cruise Bolt vehicle with no steering wheel or gas and brake pedals. This version of the Bolt made its debut at CES in 2018.
Autonomous vehicle testing from companies like Uber and Cruise are a common sight on the streets of San Francisco, but with a driver behind the wheel of larger vehicles.
Cruise CEO Ammann said last summer the company planned to launch a driverless taxi service by the end of 2019. Cruise currently operates a ridesharing service in San Francisco, but it’s only available for its employees to use. Ammann talked about a future that could include cargo delivery in addition to ride-sharing.
Last month, Ammann proclaimed in a Medium post that the world needs to move beyond human-driven single occupancy vehicles in the future and argued there’s a gap left unfilled today by public transportation systems, ridesharing services, and micro-mobility apps for scooter or bike rental.
Analysts like Karim Lakhani and Marco Iansiti, authors of the recently released Competing in the Age of AI, argue that autonomous vehicles may commoditize the auto manufacturing industry and reshape adjacent markets in a quest to make cars more like giant smartphones on wheels. Self-driving services can range from getting people to work or school to bringing them to shop at certain businesses, to direct advertising, sales, and entertainment experiences for car occupants who are no longer concerned with driving.
Cruise also shared today that it plans to dedicate office space at facilities in San Francisco entirely to the company’s growing hardware team.
Navigating the sometimes chaotic and less than predictable streets of San Francisco, Cruise has trained autonomous systems to detect and get out of the way of emergency vehicles and learned how to navigate around double-parked cars.
The money will be put toward educational purposes, Tonya Allen, president and CEO of Detroit Children’s Fund, told Barrett-Jackson after the sale.
The sale marks the most expensive charity car sold this week at Barrett-Jackson.
A 2021 Lexus LC 500 Convertible Inspiration Series VIN 100001 sold for $2 million on Friday. All proceeds benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Bob Woodruff Foundation.
Other cars sold this week that benefited charities included a 1974 Ford Bronco that was commissioned by NASCAR driver Ryan Blaney and built by Gateway Bronco as a tribute to his late grandfather, race car driver Lou Blaney.
In total, the charity cars raised about $7.6 million for various causes during the auction.
But the Corvette's sale was extra special for Barrett-Jackson CEO Craig Jackson.
Jackson told The Arizona Republic that he was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and both of his parents worked for General Motors. (READ MORE)
By PYMNTS Posted on
Mark Twain famously said there are three kinds of untruths: lies, damned lies and statistics.
And nowhere is that aphorism better illustrated over the last decade than with the statistic that more than 90 percent of all retail sales took place at brick and mortar stores. It gave retailers the illusion that digital was the retail cart driven by the physical store horse.
But, as Karen Webster and Michelle Carter, senior vice president global retail sales, data and services at Mastercard, discussed, the devil can very much be in the details. Once categories like auto sales, gasoline and restaurants are stripped from the total retail sales numbers and retail segments, like books and toys and sporting goods, are examined, those numbers begin to look very different.
The good news, said Carter, fresh off her most recent trip to the National Retail Federation (NRF), is that merchants and are very well aware that retail — and the role of physical retail in it — is changing.
“There is a firm idea that brick and mortar is changing, not going away. Overall there is a lot of energy from the omnichannel perspective, as well as a lot of interest in taking the data they have and incorporating it across channels to see how they can reach out to their customers in a way that is most relevant,” Carter explained.
The question for the 2020s, and the focus of her remarks at the big show in New York last week, is about innovations itself — what is truly leading in innovation and what constitutes being a laggard? The answer, she noted, is complex. On a basic level, retailers of all sizes have to ask themselves whether they are looking to do what they’ve always done with a slight tweak, or are they considering doing something completely different in terms of how they approach the market. The latter is innovative; the former is, well, just a tweak.
“Brands need to think about how they are innovating, and ask themselves how they are stepping out of their comfort zone to stay relevant when there are a lot of exciting completely out of the box ideas already out there.”
Testing Innovation
The problem with innovations in digital retail, Carter noted, isn’t in finding it. It’s in picking the right ones and then operationalizing them. It is why, she said, Mastercard rolled Test and Learn capabilities into its platform in 2015 with the acquisition of Applied Predictive Technologies — to allow merchant partners to incorporate a host of rich data points to understand how potential changes they might make to their organization will play out. It creates a host of comparable business data points incorporated into one place to give merchant insights into what they can expect to see pre- and post-enactment of any innovative change.
As of today, nearly five years after Test and Learn came to Mastercard, Carter noted, 45 of the nation’s top 100 retailers are using the platform to test a whole host of use cases. The most popular, she said, is testing and learning about the impact of conversation on prices, specifically raising them, by either eliminating promotions or raising MSRP. What they’ve found is that concerns about raising prices and driving away consumers can be adequately met with adding a price matching possibility for consumers who found a lower price elsewhere.
“What the data tends to show is the vast majority of consumers don’t price match, and aren’t all that affected by a slight uptick is MSRP,” Carter noted.
There are also Test and Learn scenarios around the interplay of certain factors. Sustainability was a frequently recurring theme at NRF and the desire to meet the growing demand among consumers for sustainable products. However, she noted, the data there is more nuanced. Though broadly speaking, what they have seen is that consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products — that decreased price sensitivity is focused regionally, demographically and by product in many cases.
The retail experience is changing and becoming a more blended model where a consumer might start in a store to get a feel for the product and continue that journey online and on mobile. Retailers are now tasked with using data to determine how they want to guide that journey and ultimately expand it in terms of what the customers buy and repeat it.
Hitting A Right Balance
Consumers don’t want to feel stalked or like they are being watched too closely. However, they do like seeing relevant marketing and personalized curation in the products put in front of them. This creates a bit of a puzzle for retail, Webster and Carter discussed, as building personalization requires gathering data about consumers, but too much data gathering and the attempts at personalization don’t feel helpful so much as creepy.
Part of that, Carter said, is about learning how to handle data better. Mastercard, for its part, anonymizes the information and categorizes it — so they aren’t looking at individual customers, but instead, customer types.
And just as critical, Carter noted, retailers need to develop an idea of the fine line between personal and cloyingly close.
“We’ve seen retailers that are sending customers two communications by email a day. It is way too much and we’ve had to step in and say ‘OK, first let’s try scaling this way back.’ There is a wealth of opportunity to text messages, messaging and channels so that you are helping the customer — not making them feel encroached on.”
Because Carter noted, ultimately, customers and their preferences will be doing the driving. The retailers who use data the best will be the ones who use it to discern the direction they’re going and be the ones who provide the easiest journeys to get them there.
“There is nothing in retail that can’t be fixed,” Carter said, “but a lot of these very old, established brands have to think beyond what they’ve been doing for the last 30 or 40 years and start asking: ‘What are the things that [they] can be doing to bring really innovative ideas to their organization?’” (READ MORE)
Ingrid Lunden@ingridlunden /
Google has been on a long-term mission to build inroads into the world of e-commerce by working more closely with brick-and-mortar retailers, and now it looks like it plans to extend that work a little further. The search giant is acquiring Pointy, a startup out of Dublin, Ireland, which has built hardware and software technology to help physical retailers — specifically those that might not already have an extensive e-commerce storefront detailing in-store inventory — get their products discoverable online without any extra work.
The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but a source tells us it is €147 million ($163 million).
We’re told that Google will be making a formal announcement in about an hour, but Pointy has already posted the news on its own site while we were digging around for details after getting pinged by a source. The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks, pending “customary closing conditions.” (Update: Google’s post confirming the acquisition is now here.)
Pointy is continuing to operate post-acquisition. “We look forward to building even better services in the future, with the backing of Google’s resources and reach,” the company writes. It’s not clear yet who will stay on with that plan.
A source notes that this was a “good outcome” because Pointy has a “one of a kind” product that didn’t really have any comparables in the market. Pointy had also managed to pick up quite a lot of traction as a small startup, working with around 10% of all physical retailers in the U.S. in certain categories (pets and toys were two of those, I was told).
Pointy is six years old and had raised just under $20 million from a variety of investors, including Frontline Ventures, Polaris, LocalGlobe and individuals like Lars Rasmussen (the former Google Maps supremo who went on to build search and enterprise products at Facebook).
Pointy was co-founded by Mark Cummins (CEO) and Charles Bibby (CTO). Notably, this is Cummins’ second exit to Google. His first company, the visual search startup Plink, was Google’s first-ever acquisition out of the U.K.
For Google, Pointy is a known quantity for more than the fact that it has transacted with a Cummins startup before: Pointy and Google have been working together since 2018, when the former was part of a bigger push that the search giant was making into building tools for brick-and-mortar merchants.
At that time, Pointy’s primary product was a piece of hardware that plugged a company’s point of sale/barcode scanning units, so that every time a retailer scanned its products at the point of sale, it would upload the products online (including quantities of those items), and then keep stock numbers up to date with every subsequent purchase that was made and scanned in. Pointy doesn’t track incoming inventory per se: it uses algorithms over time to figure out stock amounts to a very close degree of accuracy based just on purchasing patterns.
Then, a user who might be searching for that product online might come across those details through Google’s search results (“See What’s In Store,” which come up in Google’s Knowledge Panels and on Google Maps), or via advertisements. The aim: These listings could potentially result in shoppers buying those products from the retailer in question, ideally getting them to come into the store, where they would buy even more.
The hardware retails for around $700, but Pointy also has a free app that integrates with specific POS devices from Clover, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, Liberty, WooPOS, BestRx and CashRx POS, removing the need for the hardware.
Google’s initial partnership with Pointy in 2018 was part of a push to build out Google’s search portal with more e-commerce tools, and it was coming not a moment too soon: Amazon was both ramping up its own efforts with physical retail, and becoming a bigger threat to Google as a first port-of-call for online shoppers.
Two years on, those themes have only grown bigger with Amazon’s rise, perhaps one reason why Google was keen to bring Pointy in-house. Now, it can more deeply integrate the tech, and build upon it.
Pointy had also started to work a little closer with retailers, giving them insights into what was selling well, and what they might want to stock more of in the future, but it had never delved into the actual transaction aspect of products that it was listing online: that was left to the retailer and a shopper visiting a store to buy in person. All of that leaves a wide door open to how Pointy — and Google’s own retail commerce efforts — might develop in the future. (READ MORE)
Stadia is going into its first full year in 2020 and it's going to be a big one, complete with new games and more new features.
In 2020 Google is looking to add 120 more games to the Stadia lineup. Those will be tacked on to the already existing games in the library. In addition to the new games, Google is looking to add new features too.
In the Stadia community forums the company has shared a roadmap of sorts that lists of the features for the next three months.
More games for Stadia in 2020 is just the tip of the iceberg
Games are the platform's bread and butter. And right now there are just 27 games to play. Content is king, and Stadia will need to keep up if it wants to compete and hold people's interest.
Google is working on this of course, but games aren't the only thing players are looking for. A wider set of features is something players have been requesting since the service launched. This year, Google is delivering.
In the roadmap, Google has laid out what it plans to make available in Q1. Over the next three months, Stadia will gain support 4K gaming on the web (currently it's only an option for Chromecast Ultra users). (READ MORE)
DETROIT — General Motors has appointed its first chief sustainability officer, Dane Parker, to chart the automaker's path toward a zero-emissions future.
Parker, whose current title is vice president of sustainable workplaces, expands his role to chief sustainability officer Feb. 1, GM said in a statement Thursday.
With Parker, 51, at the helm of GM's sustainability efforts, GM slashed its manufacturing carbon intensity by 20 percent three years ahead of its goal. GM also became an EPA-recognized leader in energy efficiency and renewable energy utilization. The automaker won seven consecutive EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year awards, the statement said.
"Climate change is real. That is indisputable, and we take the challenges it presents seriously," GM CEO Mary Barra said in the statement. "The transportation sector must be part of any credible climate change solution ,and Dane's leadership, experience and passion will help us meet these challenges head-on. Our vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion is ambitious and this appointment aligns our organization to accelerate achieving that vision."
GM plans to bring 20 electric vehicles to market by 2023. Last year, GM said it would spend $3 billion to build electric trucks and battery modules at its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant and announced a joint venture with Korean battery maker LG Chem to mass-produce batteries at a $2.3 billion battery-cell plant in northeast Ohio.
Parker's team will ensure that materials are produced responsibly, lead GM as a global advocate for climate-sensitive manufacturing and mobility operations and direct the design and implementation infrastructure for EVs, the statement said.
"Our transition to electric vehicles is key, and we must continue to minimize our own operational footprint and lead changes toward a circular economy — where waste is eliminated and materials are reused and recycled," Parker said in a LinkedIn Q&A with Barra. "Given our scale, anything we do in this area has a meaningful impact. The original 'reduce, reuse, recycle' principles still apply to the industry and to us as individuals."
Parker also will oversee global facility design, engineering, construction and operations, energy procurement and efficiency, environmental compliance, real estate and workplace strategy.
Parker joined GM in 2015 as executive director of global facilities. Before that, he worked for Dell Inc. and Intel Corp. (READ MORE)
1. Autonomous robots will gain traction in last-mile delivery
