Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team attended London Tech Week 2018 held June 11–17. In this report, we feature our key takeaways from the various events we attended. A follow-up report will focus on some of the notable startups we met during the week.

• Virtual Reality (VR) can make brick-and-mortar a key component of shoppers’ multichannel experience: Travel agent TUI talked about how it has adopted VR technology to offer a better shopping experience to its customers.
• Retailers should use augmented reality (AR) to stand out to make the store visit more memorable: Creative agency Swift Creatives discussed how storytelling needs to be a key goal for retailers adopting AR in-store.
• Brick-and-mortar retailers are best positioned to become the go-to place for smart-home technology: Electronics retailer Dixon Carphone showed how its physical store presence helps to educate customers and help with the promotion of smart-home devices.
• Internet of Things (IoT) helps retail and logistics operations deliver customer value: Telecoms company Vodafone showed how IoT is empowering retail to deliver more value to customers.