Trends for Your Retail Radar

Impacted by social media, cloud computing, and emerging technologies, the retail business is changing fast.

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For retailers, growing the business in 2012 often means knowing their customer in oddly intimate ways, including what they say off the cuff about brands on social media, what time of day they shop, even where they are geographically.

At the National Retail Federation's 101st Annual Convention & Expo in New York Tuesday, a session called “What Not to Miss: Trends to Capitalize On for 2012” took a look at emerging tactics that merchants may have missed out on.

The expert panelists, Nita Rollins, director of thought leadership for Resource Interactive, and Marian Salzman, CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR and coiner of the terms metrosexual and singleton, took questions from the moderator, Jayne O’Donnell, retail reporter for USA Today, as well as a few from the audience.

Here’s a look at what bubbled up:

Keep it short, stupid: The fact that people are checking their smartphones during dinners out and constantly texting is a sign that consumers' heads are in the clouds, and Salsman says “this is going to change how we interact with brands and brand intermediaries.”

Specifically, says Salzman, retailers need to think about how to get their message across fast and pointedly, Twitter-style.

“If you can’t sell it in 140 characters or less, it’s off the market, and that included the branded hash-tag embedded in the text, she says.

Everywhere commerce: Plain old e-commerce has had to make way for t-commerce (TV and tabloid), v-commerce (video), f-commerce (Facebook), and m-commerce, meaning mobile in general, says Rollins.

“We urge all of our clients to directly monetize what [they] produce and think of every touch point,” Rollins says, adding that the rise of mobile has led to “geo-shopping” sprees that have consumers embracing multiple brands and multiple coupons. Retailers can take advantage by offering coupons to shoppers using location-based apps.

Stores as 24/7 idea centers: As e-commerce increases, what happens to physical stores? Retailers who bristled at the Amazon app that gave in-store shoppers a discount for buying online won’t like this forecast.

“We’ll do lots of shopping, and we’ll do it when we can be in our living rooms and find the best price,” Salzman says. “We’ll use stores as a way to curate ideas.”

Physical stores are still “living on agrarian hours, and the rest of us are not farmers,” she says. “We’re moving into a 24/7 lifestyle.”

She suggests that stores, especially in urban centers, would do well to stay open from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m., a hot time for e-commerce that physical stores miss out on. She also sees stores popping up in places like schools, country clubs, and restaurants, where people are doing other activities, as the shopping experience gets more blurred.

The power of the nooner: Flash-sales sites, many of which open the merchandise sales of limited goods at noon, have inspired a new type of online shopping devotee who does his or her best “work” during lunch hour. Nicknamed “the nooner,” sexual innuendo fully intended, Rollins says that the flash sale is a recession-fueled trend that retailers wished had gone away but didn’t.

While fashion sites abound, Salzman says the one area that’s still relatively untapped when it comes to flash sales is food.

“We are becoming obsessed with the quality of the food we eat. The 'what’s for dinner.' (A site could) offer what’s fresh today,” Salzman says.

Tailored by avatar: While online retail has taken “baby steps” toward providing a better apparel-sizing experience, “fit will be the final frontier,” says Rollins. She sees personal avatar-based shopping for apparel, complete with a catwalk that demonstrates what clothes look like on, happening within the next two to three years. After a consumer’s measurements are established and an online avatar created, “it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out your tastes, your style preferences, and what you want for the upcoming style season,” she says.