Technology innovation is now an integral part of the evolution of retail real estate. It is helping enhance customer service and boost the attraction of shopping venues. It will be a key component of the innovation track at MAPIC 2017.
Organised by Reed MIDEM, MAPIC, the International Retail Property Market, will be held in Cannes from 15 to 17 November.
Sandrine Devillard, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, will present an exclusive study on developments in consumer behaviour during the MAPIC 2017 opening conference entitled “Reimagining retail in the 21st century!” on Wednesday, 15 November at 9am. This conference session will also give the floor to industry experts who will use concrete cases to illustrate these developments.
In the MAPIC Innovation Forum, a conference, pitching and exhibition area, MAPIC attendees will discover more than 50 companies and startups showcasing their innovative solutions for the retail real estate industry.
The highly customer service-oriented British startups Dropit Shopping and Quiqup will exhibit for the first time at MAPIC Innovation Forum. Dropit Shopping is an application that provides in-shop consumers with the comforts of online shopping by offering a same-day shopping delivery service. Dropit Shopping has already partnered with several major retailers in the UK including Liberty London, M&S, GAP, Uniqlo, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Michael Kors.
In the same vein, Quiqup offers a personalised courier service, and has recently partnered with the brand Hellmann’s, which wanted to develop its direct sales to consumers, and now offers deliveries of baskets containing all the ingredients needed to prepare a meal at home.
Hospitality is another important aspect of customer service. This is the core activity of Hease Robotics, a French startup specialising in robots for hospitality services and sales support. It will be attending MAPIC for the first time to present its flagship product Heasy, the first interactive-kiosk robot with an integrated payment terminal. This robot has been specifically designed for large public spaces, so it is large, visible from a distance, and completely side-steps speech-recognition (because of noise in public spaces), to focus interaction exclusively on the screen.
The best solutions for creating customer purchasing journeys will be examined in the conference entitled “The new seamless customer experience: how to interact with customers and expand your business” (Thursday, 16 November at 5pm) in the presence of Elise Masurel, Marketing Director at Klépierre, Mathieu Proust, CEO of UberEATS, Pamela Wolf, Innovation Strategy Director at Salesforce and a representative from Clear Channel.
Data collection and analytics often drive new services for customers. Several companies specialising in this area will be exhibiting in the Innovation Forum. MAPIC newcomers Geoblink and Kel Quartier will showcase their localisation intelligence solutions – i.e. providing data to help retailers select the best site locations.
Other companies such as Axper and Occi, both attending for the first time at Cannes, as well as Retailic, Retency, TC Group, Xovis, Coniq and ESRI, will be showcasing a range of solutions derived from data analytics.
“Consumers now have high expectations: they want their shopping experience to be easy, enjoyable and even memorable. For this, bricks & mortar shops remain the vital embodiment of the customer experience. This is why online commerce professionals are increasingly interested in physical retail sites and are coming in greater numbers to MAPIC,” says Nathalie Depetro, Director MAPIC markets.
One example is LDLC, the e-retailer from Lyon specialising in electronic products, which plans to open a hundred stores by 2021.
This example and many others will be discussed at the conference on “E-commerce/online to offline: how brands & pure players can create the best physical experience?” (Thursday 16/11 at 12pm) co-organised with the FEVAD (the French E-commerce and Distance Selling Federation), with representatives from LDLC (France), Logopark Development Group (Russia) and AT Kearney (France).
Find out about the conference programme.
