Retail Trend: Insights Streamline The Shopping Trip

Luckily for shoppers, an emerging suite of innovative solutions is providing them with availability insights around their favorite products, and enabling retailers and brands to provide consistent and streamlined experiences around curated product selections. 

Search tool from Simon Property Group tells shoppers what’s in stock
Simon Search, a new search solution from shopping center operator Simon Property Group, lets shoppers look up whether the products they want are available and in-stock at participating retailers within a Simon mall or shopping center. Popular retailers like Aeropostal, Anthropologie, Athleta, Banana Republic, Gap, Old Navy, J.Crew, and JCPenney are all participating in the Simon Search pilot. Simon Search

Shopify adds inventory tracking features and more for merchant roster
Shopify has built new offline infrastructure to help its merchants connect with more people in-store. Features include a new “Tap to Pay” on iPhone payment solution, a new wholesale feature, a social commerce integration with Twitter, as well as leveraging a new partnership with Google that includes a local inventory sync making sure that shoppers won’t waste a trip to the store for an item they want that isn’t in stock. Shopify

Amazon gives supplier-partners innovative store analytics solutions
The just-announced tool from Amazon, called Store Analytics, will give Amazon’s suppliers granular insights around anonymized customer interactions from data collected by Amazon’s Just Walk Out and Dash Cart system. The information will help suppliers frame up their merchandising strategies, develop promotions and determine which items to offer their shoppers, as well as where to place those items on-shelf to drive purchases. Amazon

EasyBins recreates the multi-store shopping trip 
Merging the convenience of digital ordering with the breadth of options available shopping IRL, grocery service EasyBins is creating a best-in-class cross-shopping delivery experience. Increasingly popular in the US heartland, EasyBins lets shoppers, for example, get produce from Whole Foods, personal care from Target, and frozen goods from Kroger and bundle them all together into one order by leveraging a complex picking and routing network that operates like a factory assembly system across partner stores as orders come in. EasyBins

Guess is using digital store twins to streamline its merchandising
Utilizing “digital twin” technology, the fashion retailer Guess is able to provide consistency across its stores for shoppers and create immersive, virtual experiences for employees, external buyers, and wholesale partners. The technology helps streamline retail operations and ensure that the stores are stocked with the products customers are looking for. Press Release