The Role of Technology in Retailing
By adapting all functions of retailing from manufacturers and wholesalers, retailers have relieved them from selling products in a small quantity to the customers. For accelerating the success of the business, the retail industry must satisfy all of its customers and fulfill its responsibilities towards wholesalers and producers. For improving customer satisfaction, the products should be of the latest styles and designs. The retailers have to adopt modern technologies for improving the quality of the existing products or services (Fuentes-Blasco et al. 2017).
Retailing can be defined as one of the most dynamic fields and it is necessary for a retail organization to innovate its procedures, shop environment, selling, stock, interior layout, and others. Most of retail organizations introduce new changes with changing demographic, industry infrastructure, and technology. But several types of technological challenges are there that a retail organization must eliminate to ensure its success.
High tech tools and software help to manage orders, track pricing, promote loyalty, and increase customer satisfaction by enhancing in-store experiences of the customers. Technological factors involve product techniques, communication resources, logistics, e-commerce technologies, marketing, and information (Aversa, Hernandez, and Doherty 2021). These can hamper how organizations sell their products or goods, operates, and collects intelligence on suppliers, competitors, and customers.
- What are the technological challenges that can affect the performance and growth of the retail industry?
- How do technological challenges make negative impacts on the retail industry?
- What are the strategies that can help to mitigate all technological challenges in the retail industry?
- To explore various technological challenges that can hamper the performance and growth of the retail industry.
- To evaluate the ways through which technological challenges can make negative impacts on the growth of the retail industry.
- To identify effective strategies for eliminating all technological challenges from a retail organization.
The roles of technologies in retail organizations touch almost every aspect of the business for both “brick-and-mortar” stores and e-commerce sites. As an example, the software for retail inventory management and other tools help in conducting and guiding several business operations by applying big data analytics (Makridakis 2017). On the other hand, digital technologies help retail organizations in different activities such as marketing, sales, payment processing, and others. With the growth of the businesses, various technological challenges such as information security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, skills gap, cloud computing, and others are also arising and these may affect the performance of an organization. Thus, this research paper can help small and large-sized retail organizations to address all technological challenges that can affect their performance and also eliminate those challenges.
According to itpro.co.uk (2022), the rapid development in Big Data that is mainly sourced from different types of sensor technologies and mobile devices has brought more competitive pressure on the retailers or retail organizations to leverage all of this data within their decision-making practices. According to the wheel of retailing theory, retailers enter a market and also progress with the help of a cycle of different strategies and these phases are the entry stage, trading up stage, vulnerability stage, and maturity stage. This article focuses more on different types of technological challenges such as tackling e-commerce, digitalizing consumer expectation, multiple risks of data security, and others. From this article, it can be found that the improvement and adoption of Big Data based decision support depends on the data environment that helps to promote a clear and concise corporate strategy and transparency. On the other hand, Litke, Anagnostopoulos and Varvarigou (2019) state that Blockchain technology is attracting more attention of the stakeholders in various industrial domains, such as the supply chain logistics. The retail accordion theory helps to describe that the market starts as a large store offering different products or merchandise before shrinking to the targeted stores. From the findings of this article it can be stated that blockchain technology can bring several challenges to the retail industry and for this reason, more efforts will be needed to adopt an effective blockchain technology throughout the entire supply chain of a retail industry.
Managing Customer Experience with Technology
According to retail lifecycle theory, the retail industry experiences a cycle that includes innovation, development or growth, a maturity phase, and decline. By evaluating and analyzing analogous inventions of the digital, AI, and industrial revolutions, it can be stated that it would help to bring various extensive changes that may affect every aspect of life and society (berwickpartners.co.uk 2022). But several risk factors such as payment security and others are there that can affect customer satisfaction and experience. On the other hand, Haseeb et al. (2019), state that Technology adoption can be defined as one of the most difficult tasks for medium and small-sized retail organizations because of several reasons such as market problems, lack of resources, and others. technological challenges make negative impacts on the sustainable performance of an organization. According to environmental evolution theory, the retail organizations will change and evolve for responding to the changes in the microenvironment. The authors conducted a survey method with almost 280 research participants and analyzed all data by using PLS or partial least square – SEM or structural equation modeling. From this research paper, the authors concluded that organization process and structure strengthen positive relationships between IT implementation and retail organizations.
According to Roy et al. (2018), rapid development in the internet technology has led to several innovative and smart technologies. The authors focused on customer resistance to and acceptance of smart and advanced technologies in a retail industry by integrating relevant literature on system characteristics, store reputation, technology readiness, and acceptance model. According to the conflict theory of retailing, for improvements to be done in any type of environment, there should be conflicts with a new idea taking place of different old ideas. The authors collected data by applying a quantitative survey method and all data or information was also analyzed by PLS path modeling. The findings of this article conclude that brand management strategy must be improved for eliminating all technological challenges. On the other hand, Simone and Sabbadin (2018) state that the development of digital disruption, mobile technologies, and the internet has entirely changed the retail industry as well as the implementation of different levers of the retail mix and also the shoppers’ behaviors. The Omnichannel becomes a reliable channel through which retailers sell their goods or services. According to the theory of retail mix, the marketing plan must be used for addressing major elements such as personnel, goods, price, location, and services. Different types of automated software solutions are there that can simplify the retail business.
Most of the researchers mainly follow two different types of methods for conducting research and these two methodologies are quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The qualitative research approach focuses on collecting several information through conversational and open-ended communication (Clark and Vealé 2018). Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches will be applied in conducting this research paper. A deductive method will also be followed in this research because this research method aims to test or evaluate existing theories and helps to describe the causal relationship between variables and concepts.
Addressing Technological Challenges in Retailing
There are different types of methods that can be used in collecting primary data and those are direct and indirect personal interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and others. A survey method will be applied in this research paper for collecting all primary data or information. On the other hand, secondary data sources include newspapers, journals, magazines, books, and others. The secondary data collection method refers to collecting and evaluating all information that is already available (Williams et al. 2017). A secondary data collection method will also be applied in this research paper to better understand the perspectives and opinions of other researchers, authors, or scholars.
In the survey method, sampling can be determined as the selection of individuals from a certain population to predict the characteristics of the entire population (Xiao, Zuo and Zhou 2018). Different types of sampling methods are there such as cluster, random, stratified, systematic, and random. The total number of samples for this research will be 50. A total of 50 managers of different retail organizations will participate in the survey method. The researcher will provide a survey link and through that link, the research participants will give their responses. After collecting all responses, a statistical method will be applied for interpreting and analyzing all data or information. Apart from this, a random sampling method will be applied in this research paper.
Research philosophy includes four different types of methods: pragmatism, interpretivism, realism, and positivism. Interpretivism research philosophy employs multiple methods or strategies to reflect several aspects of a problem or issue (Alharahsheh and Pius 2020). Realism philosophy depends on the assumption of the scientific method for the development of the knowledge and it may be classified in two groups: critical and direct. But among all of these research philosophies, positivism research philosophy will be applied in this paper.
Among different types of research designs, explanatory research design will be applied for conducting this research because it can help a researcher to increase understanding of the main research topic, predict the future occurrences and also ascertain why or how a specific phenomenon is happening (Bentouhami, Casas and Weyler 2021). If the suggested research methods do not work effectively, then an interview method will be applied which includes asking various open-ended questions for collecting elicit and relevant data or information about the main research topic. A structured or semi-structured interview method can be used for conducting this research paper if the suggested research methods do not work successfully.
References
Alharahsheh, H.H. and Pius, A., 2020. A review of key paradigms: Positivism VS interpretivism. Global Academic Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2(3), pp.39-43.
Aversa, J., Hernandez, T. and Doherty, S., 2021. Incorporating big data within retail organizations: A case study approach. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 60, p.102447.
Bentouhami, H., Casas, L. and Weyler, J., 2021. Reporting of “Theoretical Design” in Explanatory Research: A Critical Appraisal of Research on Early Life Exposure to Antibiotics and the Occurrence of Asthma. Clinical Epidemiology, 13, p.755.
berwickpartners.co.uk, 2022. Tech challenges in Retail. [online] Berwick Partners. Available at:
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Fuentes-Blasco, M., Moliner-Velázquez, B., Servera-Francés, D. and Gil-Saura, I., 2017. Role of marketing and technological innovation on store equity, satisfaction and word-of-mouth in retailing. Journal of product & brand management.
Haseeb, M., Hussain, H.I., ?lusarczyk, B. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2019. Industry 4.0: A solution towards technology challenges of sustainable business performance. Social Sciences, 8(5), p.154.
itpro.co.uk, 2022. [online] Itpro.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.itpro.co.uk/marketing-comms/e-commerce/360398/five-tech-challenges-facing-retailers-today> [Accessed 16 April 2022].
Litke, A., Anagnostopoulos, D. and Varvarigou, T., 2019. Blockchains for supply chain management: Architectural elements and challenges towards a global scale deployment. Logistics, 3(1), p.5.
Makridakis, S., 2017. The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and firms. Futures, 90, pp.46-60.
Roy, S.K., Balaji, M.S., Quazi, A. and Quaddus, M., 2018. Predictors of customer acceptance of and resistance to smart technologies in the retail sector. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 42, pp.147-160.
Simone, A. and Sabbadin, E., 2018. The new paradigm of the omnichannel retailing: key drivers, new challenges and potential outcomes resulting from the adoption of an omnichannel approach. International Journal of Business and Management, 13(1), pp.85-109.
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Xiao, N.C., Zuo, M.J. and Zhou, C., 2018. A new adaptive sequential sampling method to construct surrogate models for efficient reliability analysis. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 169, pp.330-338.
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