The wave of digital and technological innovation sweeping retail is creating a shopping environment with the connected consumer at its core.

The wave of digital and technological innovation sweeping retail is creating a shopping environment with the connected consumer at its core.

Eager to interact and shop seamlessly across multiple channels, this consumer is in touch and in control.

Within the four walls of a retail store that means more high-tech gadgetry than ever before as iPads, touchscreen kiosks, interactive catalogues and virtual mirrors take the place of traditional retail essentials. A retailer no longer needs to have shelf upon shelf of goods when a screen can be used to showcase the entire range at the click of a button.

This blurring of the boundaries between the virtual and physical space has become a fundamental component of a successful multichannel strategy, and retailers such as John Lewis, Tesco, Argos, House of Fraser and Next are leading the charge. But others aren’t far behind - in the past six months there has been a surge of technology trials and pilots by a variety of retailers.

Keeping up with the latest technological developments isn’t always easy, which is why a growing number of the UK’s more progressive retailers are working with fledgling entrepreneurial technology start-ups to help beef up their multichannel propositions. Read more about this burgeoning trend and find out how partnering with newly established businesses in the UK and abroad is upping the innovation stakes.

And it’s not just in stores that technological developments are keeping the connected consumer happy. Retailers are utilising the power of technology to communicate with shoppers directly from factories, fields, mines and processing plants around the globe. Technology enables retailers to increase transparency in the supply chain and ensure shoppers get the ‘right’ information fast.

Closer to home, technology is facilitating a vast shift in retail warehousing. Our report on examines how automated processes are sometimes taking over warehousing duties from people in a battle of man versus machine.

For the connected consumer, a time when technology replaces face-to-face interaction entirely isn’t far away. How retailers react to that prospect will be what ultimately determines their long-term future in a world dominated by machines.