Walmart Launches Retail Concept… Brick-and-Mortar Takes Center Stage… How Tech Will Impact Your Business

Walmart Launches ‘Town Center’ Retail Concept in Four Locations

Walmart is quietly trying out a new town-center concept in four locations across the country. Two locations in Washington state, one in Colorado and the other in Texas is in the preliminary stages of taking advantage of its extensive parking areas to  provide community spaces at its superstores. L.B. Johnson, Walmart’s vice president of U.S. realty operations, said, “We want to provide pedestrian connectivity from our box to the experiential zones that are planned on our footprint. We want to augment these experiences and activities with more food-and-beverage, with health-and-fitness, essential services and entertainment.” In addition to the projects, Benjamin Romano, a business reporter for the Seattle Times, notes, “Walmart has significantly ramped up its online shopping options to compete with rival Amazon.”

Brick-and-Mortar Takes Center Stage for Retail in 2019

As retail continues its evolution, prognosticators are peering into their crystal balls to figure out what the big trends will be in 2019. Jia Wertz, the CEO of Studio 15, a “socially-responsible fashion brand,” writes on Forbes.com that among the trends for the coming year are the rise of experiential retail and multi-channel being the new normal. With the latter, she notes that “brick-and-mortar stores still play a key role in the sales process” as they help “widen the net that brands use to catch leads and convert them.” For the former, retailers will satisfy customers who are “seeking a more engaging experience” than simply shopping and the “emergence of virtual reality, augmented reality, and improved mobile technology will continue to push retail brands to add layers and new experiences to their traditional retail models” to help them along the way.

How Tech Will Impact Your Business in Total Retail’s Free Report

The folks at Total Retail have an early Christmas present for everyone – they’ve released their 2018-2019 Retail Technology Report – it’s available as a free downloadable PDF file. It’s chock full of helpful stats and charts and graphics detailing the retail technology landscape, including current usage, the emerging technologies that retailers are most interested in and what they believe will have the biggest impact on their businesses, and more. The report notes, for example, that 37 percent of respondents “are not planning to spend money on emerging retail technologies within the next 12 months. This finding supports the narrative that retailers are focused on getting the basics right first before investing in new, emerging tech that may not have an easily measured ROI.”

Thanks for Visiting DMM at the 2018 ICSC Deal Making Show

Thanks to all who came to the DMM booth during ICSC’s New York Deal Making at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City earlier this month. We talked about our new Retail Boundary Data, “Cross-Shopping” report services, online access and custom databases. We discussed how our reference tools can help you identify opportunities and make decisions for your business. It wasn’t all about us, though. We got lots of great feedback from you and learned about your perspectives about the industry we share. If you didn’t get a chance to see us at the booth feel free to contact us anytime for a chat!