From GenAI to Data, Loyalty, and Personalization: Key Insights From NRF and Strategic Considerations on Retail Customer Experience in 2024

This IDC Perspective presents key insights into and strategic considerations regarding retail CX from NRF24. The NRF Retail Big Show 2024 emphasized the growing role of AI and GenAI in the retail industry, confirming future-looking trends that 95% of retailers will invest in these technologies by 2027, according to the IDC's Retail Insights prediction. Retailers are increasingly using data-driven decision making and customer-centricity to predict trends, tailor marketing efforts, and optimize inventory management. Many retailers, from Walmart to Carrefour, are implementing GenAI as a game-changing technology, but rather for ROI-driven use cases such as product searching, personalized product recommendations, and promotions. As part of a series of post-NRF documents published by IDC Retail Insights, this report focuses on retail customer experience' strategic considerations and insights from NRF24, highlighting the need for a stronger data foundation, improved loyalty strategy, and a customer-centric approach to innovation."Retail organizations need to leverage a stronger data foundation for hyper-personalized customer experience, improve loyalty strategy, fine-tune the value-vs.-risk framework for GenAI use cases, and drive innovation through customer centricity," said Ornella Urso, Head of IDC Retail Insights and Customer Experience Strategies Lead, Europe. "The shift toward intelligent retail necessitates achieving fully interoperability among customer, enterprisewide, and partner data as well as cultural transformation within organizations, emphasizing continuous learning from customer interactions and maintaining frontline teams' commitment to exceeding customer expectations."