The pandemic has permanently changed the landscape of what consumers want from an in-store experience. There has been a shift away from high-touch human interaction and movement toward using tech for everything from finding items to checking out. As hard as the retail sector has been hit, now is the time to invest in strengthening technology in brick-and-mortar establishments. Because if the tech goes down, customers and sales walk out the door.

"As retailers look to the future, they will need to re-examine how they can still provide an optimal in-store experience for customers while also taking pandemic-related factors into consideration. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI)- and machine learning (ML)-based technologies will play an increasingly larger role in facilitating this.

"For retailers across sectors, there’s a heightened need now to examine the brick-and-mortar experience and figure out how to make it behave more like an online channel in some sense. How do you maintain consistency of brand, experience and customer-centricity across all channels?"

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