Over the last 20 years, the global retail industry has changed almost beyond recognition, with the former dominance of physical bricks-and-mortar stores increasingly giving way to the inexorable rise of online and mobile ecommerce retailers.
This ongoing shift in the retail sector from physical stores to a mix of physical, online and mobile ‘omnichannel’ retail continues to be driven by the latest technological innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), in specific technologies that are improving and personalising the customer experience such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) or in technologies such as machine learning (ML) and big data analysis that are revolutionising retailers’ supply chain management.