News

Opinion: Technology is a must for department store success

September 21, 2012

A blog post on the Australian website The Conversation highlighted the rocky future facing department store retail. 

Here is an excerpt from the post:

The real issue facing retailers here is how to best re-configure their operations to cater to changes in consumer buying patterns that involve a cyber-world narrative. The Australian Retailers Association recently noted that around 40-60 percent of goods purchased by Australian consumers are made from offshore websites.

While this does provide some traction to the view held by analysts that this is damaging to Australian retailers, the fact that only 5 percent of total retail sales are purchased online indicates two things.

First, the "competitiveness" problem is not too large at the moment. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there is still time to remedy this problem.

Therefore the key challenge facing retailers is the best manner to make the customer experience more engaging and valuable given the imminent changes that and internet age and other forms of technology bring to the sector.

Read more about technology in retail.