Recent TRG blog posts

Since the crazy rising of online purchase and channels, a big supermaket style is becoming increasingly undermined. Not only do online channels compete effectively in non-food areas that larger stores were designed to support, but the rate of growth has become unpopular with communities and promoted planning issues with regulators. As a result, in the last two decades, retailers have placed renewed emphasis on convenience formats. Customer convenience and service are the key to make change in this industry, make the convenience-form retail become so delightful.

For all retail managers, profit is always a crucial element when pricing products. However, as customer satisfaction is also a survival key, a smart pricing strategy which is done accurately and in a timely manner is a must.This article presents six common pricing mistakes that retailers should avoid.

Department stores and big retail chains once dictated the clothes Americans wore and the products they used simply by stocking those goods on their shelves. That influence is fading away to nothing in a world of infinite options offered by e-commerce competitors.

When Amazon can sell almost anything, deliver it on the same day, and for less money than you can find it elsewhere, what is the role of the store? For Circuit city, Borders and thousands of other dead or dying retailers this is an existential question.

A New Report for the Changing Economy. One Step Retail Solutions previously published a widely read report titled “The 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Independent Retailers” which presented the results of extensive research into retail industry trends, the major challenges impacting retailers and how retail Point of Sale (POS) technology could be used to overcome those challenges. 

Over the last year, while updating our research into the current retail environment, it became evident that the constantly changing technology landscape, in and of itself, has now become an additional source of concern for retail owners and managers.  We also determined that small to midsized chains, especially those who wish to continue their growth, face an even greater set of challenges than single stores or large retailers. 

Between 1994 and 2011, the number of farmers markets across the United States grew from 1,755 to 7,175. While much of this growth is likely due to a broader understanding of the importance of eating local, fresher, and seasonal, it is also suspected that it is driven by a desire of many people to shop differently — in pleasant family-friendly contexts that enable low-key, face-to-face interactions with merchants. A parallel trend is the rise of the food truck movement. In research we conducted earlier this year on the future of commerce, we found that people gravitate towards these kinds of "pop-up" vendor experiences because of the more personal qualities they provide — getting to know the vendor, suggestions for making the most of a purchase, or even just a certain quirkiness. In other words, these are fundamentally more human retail experiences.

It's not just with pop-up vendors, though. As the Apple Store demonstrates, and Ron Johnson explains, retail needs to get more human at all levels. One place we're seeing this is in the experience of paying for an item. The road from tills to cash registers to large and complex point-of-sale machines has lead to an increasingly literal divide between the buyer and the seller. Store employees spend more time looking at their displays than at the customer — and the customer is left looking at the back of the display, which is rarely an attractive sight. But at the Apple Store, you don't need to wait in line to purchase your items from someone behind a counter. Purchases take place anywhere in the store, and the customer and sales associate typically stand side-by-side during the transaction, which is executed on a modified iPod Touch.

Point of Sale (POS) is going through rapid change driven by emerging technology trends and innovations. In the last post, we discussed the explosion of hardware and software innovation and its impacts on this evolution. In this post, we will introduce one more critical part and its impact in POS innovation.

Along with the emerging trends in technology, Point of Sale (POS) is thought to be also going through a profound transformation. New trends such as intertwined drivers of mobile devices and sensor proliferation, the transition of back-office systems to the cloud, the demand of enhancing customer experiences, etc., have led to changes in consumer behavior.

Point of Sale (POS) is going through rapid change driven by emerging technology trends and innovations. In the last post, we discussed the explosion of hardware and software innovation and its impacts on this evolution. In this post, we will introduce one more critical part and its impact in POS innovation.