As the retail industry faces mounting pressure to redefine the role of physical stores, Incisiv, in partnership with Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, released the 2025 State of the Industry: Store Innovationreport. The report outlines key challenges and transformative opportunities in retail as stores move beyond the traditional commerce model to embrace roles as experience hubs, community spaces, and digital interaction centers. Based on data from 440 retail technology and business leaders worldwide, the findings provide insights on retail transformation trends that highlight the need to evolve technology and operational strategies as well as details specific to global regions including Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
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“The future of retail lies in building a strong, flexible foundation that supports rapid innovation and seamless integration of new capabilities. Leading retailers are blending commerce, community, and content in groundbreaking ways, redefining success beyond traditional metrics to include experiential offerings and customer engagement”
“The retail industry is at a crucial inflection point,” said Giri Agarwal, Chief Strategy Officer at Incisiv. “Our research reveals that the challenge for retailers isn’t a lack of innovation intent or investment but a fundamental mismatch between retailers’ ambitions and their ability to quickly bring new capabilities to life. The future belongs to those who can reimagine how they build and deliver solutions that align with their goals versus those who implement the most technology.”
Key Findings
- In-Store Personalization Gaps: Despite 46% of retailers ranking personalization as a top revenue driver, only 9% have achieved industry-leading integration of digital and physical channels. Retailers are tackling this challenge by reimagining their technology architecture to enable true cross-channel personalization, with 13% currently using unified commerce platforms and 44% planning to use them.
- Rapid Experimentation Limits: Rapid in-store innovation is essential with 44% of retailers prioritizing faster rollouts of in-store tech. The future of store innovation hinges on modularity with 44% of retailers seeking to reduce time-to-market for new in-store technology and a 73% improvement rate through modern tech stacks.
- Operational Excellence by Balancing Security and Innovation: Retailers are rethinking their security architecture with 50% of retailers planning to explore AI-driven loss prevention systems over the next year. 75% expect to reduce shrink numbers and 79% anticipate improved inventory accuracy.
- Sustainability is a Core Principle: The industry is shifting to prioritize sustainability yet only 6% of retailers rate their store technologies as industry-leading for sustainability goals. Retailers are increasingly aligning sustainability with operational efficiency, with 43% prioritizing extending technology lifecycles and 74% expecting a reduction in energy consumption.
“The future of retail lies in building a strong, flexible foundation that supports rapid innovation and seamless integration of new capabilities. Leading retailers are blending commerce, community, and content in groundbreaking ways, redefining success beyond traditional metrics to include experiential offerings and customer engagement,” said Fredrik Carlegren, VP and Head of Marketing and Communications at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. “By adopting future-ready architectures and sustainable designs, retailers are setting new benchmarks while transforming physical stores into dynamic hubs of innovation.”
NRF 2025 Incisiv Speakeasy (Saturday, January 11, 2024)
The 2025 State of the Industry: Store Innovation study offers a blueprint for executives navigating this accelerated retail transformation era. To understand the critical strategies aligned with retail transformation and success, interested retail leaders are invited to apply to attend the exclusive NRF 2025 Incisiv Speakeasy panel and dinner hosted by Incisiv and Toshiba.
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