Executive Summary

Retail has undergone a significant transformation over the past decade, and continues to evolve quickly. At the heart of the transformation are new digital trends that are driving fast-changing consumer preferences – and putting amazing new tools into retailers’ hands. In 2019, the industry will be shaped by emerging technologies that change the way consumers interact with brands, while retailers will collaborate more than ever with tech startups to future-proof their businesses.

We’ve identified the top 10 tech trends for 2019 that we believe will drive and enable retail to become stronger and better equipped to serve evolving consumer demand, to understand consumer behavior and create increasingly customized offerings.

• Tech, brands and retailers will work together to automate apparel manufacturing
• We’ll see an increase in blockchain in supply chain, e-commerce and CRM
• Last-mile delivery will proliferate as consumer expectations rise
• Reality technology will become more commonplace — and a disruptor
• Computer vision will be used more to improve e-commerce
• Retailers will use more data-driven models to increase personalization
• Voice search will become more commonplace
• Companies will adopt more IoT technology to gather better in-store data
• E-sport startups will get more funding
• Healthtech will transform the consumer landscape