Your store may be turning off potential customers without your even knowing it. Plenty of fully functional stores have this problem. How can you be sure yours isn’t one of them?

Technology is changing the general merchandise aisles. Online greeting cards have grabbed share from traditional cards, and photofinishing is taking a hit as consumers move to digital photo publishing.

It’s called automated retailing. While retail merchants MaxWellness and Kroger are still in the pilot phase, more or less, this should become a fast brand extension that can reach consumers in remote locations — the bus stop/train depot, the hospital, the airport, the school, the gym or inside another noncompetitive retailer’s box.


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While consumers will continue to define value based on price, other key trends — including new product development, technology, store layouts and shopping patterns — will drive the market in 2012, according to SymphonyIRI research.

Within the past month, two Ohio-based traditional retailers announced plans to test-market automated retail vending machines.

More than 51% of consumers plan to spend the same amount of money in 2012 as in the previous year, according to a 2012 Shopping Outlook survey conducted by PriceGrabber.

In its early days, social media meant "connecting with people." That’s still what it’s mostly about. But obviously, we’ve come a long way from those now prehistoric list-servs where we simply posted messages back-and-forth with people of similar interests and pursuits. It’s still about connecting. But now organizations use it for targeted marketing purposes, where once social media was considered the protected domain of the individual. Consumers seem to accept that it has become just another means by which brands are going to try to earn their loyalty.

Retailers have always been about enhancing the shopping experience, but there are two factors this year that really should underscore the importance in that customer focus. Differentiating a retail shopping trip by experience is a lot friendlier to the margins because a shopper willing to trade on shopping experience also is willing to spend a little more. And with the proliferation of social media and apps for smartphones and tablets, there has never been a more efficient means to target a message to a shopper who is physically in the aisles and making a purchase decision than today.

U.S. retail e-commerce sales experienced a strong finish in 2011, putting sales for the full year well ahead of 2010, according to ComScore.

The Global Market Development Center on Tuesday announced that it is expanding its “365 Days of Value” program through its advisory boards to support members throughout the year.