Customer-Interfacing Retail Technologies in 2020 & Beyond: An Integrative Framework and Research Directions

The world of retailing is changing rapidly, and much of that change has been enabled by customer-interfacing retail technologies. This commentary offers a framework for classifying technologies, based on their primary influence on a customer’s purchase journey – in the pre-purchase stage, needs management and search engagement technologies; in purchase stage, purchase transaction and physical acquisition technologies; and in the post-purchase stage, follow-up service and loyalty management technologies. We then discuss and classify forty recent retail technologies according to this framework. Finally, we identify areas that offer great potential for further research on retail technology.