By 2017, three times as many retailers as now will explicitly pin their customer and operations strategies on 3rd Platform technologies, according to IDC Retail Insights, which released a slew of predictions for the retail industry that will impact CRM, customer loyalty, customer retention, customer engagement, and customer experience.
During a Web conference titled, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail Agenda 2015 Predictions, IDC Retail Insights offered predictions and new trends that loom on the horizon.
Here is a taste of some of IDC Retail Insights’ keen predictions:
In 2015, CIOs will invest in omni-channel integration technologies as a top priority to support growth in the omni-channel shopper sales premium of 30%.
Over the next three years, half of CIOs across the top 250 retailers will adopt omni-channel IT governance fit for a 3rd Platform era to combat shadow IT.
By 2016, the top 150 retailers will improve their return on investment (ROI) on hyper-personal loyalty based on unified customer engagement.
By 2018, 60% of omni-channel retailers will have launched customer mobile payment initiatives to enhance existing ecommerce, loyalty, and in-store mobile point of sale (MPOS) investments.
As cyber attacks increase, 50% of the top 250 retailers will have reduced exposure and loss by more than 50% by the end of 2016 with intelligent sense and respond security strategies.
By the end 2016, product intelligence (PI) will inform 80% of the top ten e-commerce retailers' pricing decisions and drive mainstream adoption of high-velocity pricing.
By 2018, on demand socially networked delivery services (including Uber, EBay Now, Shutl, Deliv, Postmates, Instacart, Amazon, and Alibaba) will perform 90% of all intra-day direct-to-consumer deliveries.
By the end of 2015, at least 25 retailers with location-based services will increase same shopper sales impacted by location-based services (LBS) by 5% via analytics-driven agile engagement and operations.
By 2016, even as private brand growth flattens in the U.S., consumer driven private brand product innovation will drive a 10% improvement in customer visit frequency.
“Relentless technology innovation underpins consumers’ participatory behavior and expectations,” Leslie Hand, Vice President of IDC Retail Insights, said in a release. “The most successful retailers will find opportunities by putting mobility, analytics, cloud, and social to work in their customer and operations strategies, adopting omni-channel integration technologies and IT governance, unifying customer engagement for hyper-personalized loyalty, adopting product intelligence for marketing and competitive insight, 
employing location-based services via analytics driven agile engagement and operations, utilize socially-networked on-demand delivery services, and gain share with private label merchandise.”