Market Research
2025 Connected Retail Experience Study: Mobility is Driving Associate Productivity
Q1, 2025
The retail industry is navigating a critical transformation, with labor challenges, rising customer expectations, and operational inefficiencies converging amid growing digital demands. As stores grapple with associate hiring and retention, they face mounting pressure to meet the technological expectations of both their workforce and shoppers. Convenience has become a driving force, even as retailers strive to balance personalization and create memorable in-store experiences.
This report, based on insights from grocery and specialty retail executives, reveals how retailers are leveraging mobile-first strategies to enhance associate productivity and operational efficiency. Seamless connectivity and robust network infrastructure are pivotal in modern retail, enabling mobile-first solutions and AI advancements to optimize associate productivity, enhance customer engagement, and ensure operational efficiency. Building on this foundation, the report examines the strategic use of AI and mobile technologies, such as inventory tracking apps and push-to-talk systems, to bridge the gap between current capabilities and future needs. With personalized customer experiences and streamlined operations as the goal, the report highlights both the challenges and opportunities shaping the connected retail experience.
FOUR KEY B2C COMMERCE IMPERATIVES
Incisiv
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As consumers continue to reshape their expectations,
enterprises must contend with a uniquely challenging landscape.
The consumer technology landscape is forever changing.
From Pinterest to TikTok, WeChat to Instagram, new experiences can rapidly gain consumer adoption and relevance.
From augmented reality to voice, smartwatches to chatbots, consumers are constantly embracing new interaction paradigms.
Commoditized convenience is eroding loyalty and margin.
Consumers expect convenience. If you can't deliver it, they'll go elsewhere - e.g. next day shipping becoming the new standard.
Walmart will reportedly lose USD 1 billion on eCommerce revenue of USD 21 billion this year as it faces challenges in its bid to complete against Amazon – from trouble integrating its DNVB acquisitions to impact on margin from its next-day delivery operations.
Consumers value experiences that are curated to fit their lives better.
They want to engage, be served, and transact at their time, their pace, their place. They have little patience, infinite choice and the freedom to swipe left at the slightest hint of friction.
