R&D event lifts the lid on retail's future
A small group of retailers, including representatives from Arcadia, Home Retail Group, Mothercare and Tesco were given a glimpse of the future of shopping at Adastral Park, BT's world-renowned research centre, when Gary Sharp, vice president of sales for the retail sector, hosted a customer event called The Retail Futurescope. Find out what they saw, what they said, and how you can visit too...
Give your senior team a glimpse of the future
If your senior management team meetings are getting bogged down in the same old day-to-day stuff, do everyone a favour and get out. And take the rest with you.
Get everyone buzzing again by getting together in one of the world's most successful research and development (R&D) centres. BT customers can book a conference room at Adastral Park and take advantage of:
- complimentary conference rooms in stimulating surroundings
- an innovative retail technology showcase
- interactive demos of current and future technology
- a personalised tour, designed to meet your specific needs
Contact us for more details about who is eligible to attend, and how to book your team in
Adastral Park is one of the world's biggest and more successful research and development (R&D) centres. We don't have any ejector seats or dagger-shoes, but we've pioneered a lot of other useful stuff there. It was the place where Europe's first satellite transmission service was launched; video on demand was trialled as far back as 1995; and fibre broadband was first pushed to 80Mbit/s.
The Futurescope event showed how things like wi-fi, facial recognition, augmented reality and contactless payments could make a real difference and gave retailers a chance to:
- discuss what's driving retail, in terms of consumer, retailer and supply chain
- see new technology in action with a tour of the retail showcase
- get their hands on the best bits with a series of interactive demos.
"Our aim was to show BT's big retailer customers what consumers will want to engage with in the future and how they can use our technology to differentiate themselves and keep their customers happy," said Gary.
"Internet shopping and mobile commerce are both growing fast, but most shopping is still done in bricks and mortar. Things are very tough in the high street at the moment so the challenge for retailers is to make every experience as exciting and engaging as their best online experience."
Chaired by Ian McGarrigle, Director of the World Retail Congress and former editor of Retail Week, the day's presentations and debates included:
- the future of shopping
- using technology to differentiate brand and engage customers
- what will the consumer of the future want?
Ian said: "Today's shoppers don't see channels – they just want to buy from a brand."
Mike Bradshaw from Boots agreed: "I'm director of in-store marketing, and we have someone else in charge of online and digital – but to the customer it's all the same."
BT's customer experience futurologist, Dr Nicola Millard, also unveiled the findings of her research into the use of social media by shoppers. She has discovered that, surprisingly, 83 per cent of social media content is not on Facebook or Twitter, but on forums.
"Social media is like a dancefloor," she said. "Too many companies are standing on the edge looking at who's dancing, what kind of dance they're doing and trying to decide who they fancy dancing with, but haven't plucked up the courage to actually join in."
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