Navigate consumer shifts and harness exponential tech
Creating a seamless customer experience is more important and more complex than ever before. Marketing sets the customer expectations, digital creates online and mobile touchpoints, and IT ensures the technology infrastructure supports customer interactions.
Over the course of three days at NRF Nexus, attendees explored ambitious ideas and actionable insights from retail professionals leading marketing, technology and digital operations at the industry’s most innovative companies. They explored how these leaders are working with their teams to ideate, craft and execute unique experiences to stay ahead.
A glimpse of retail's future frontiers
NRF Nexus is like a time machine, giving you the ability to see into the future by discussing the technology, trends and strategies that will move your business forward. NRF Nexus 2024 explored relevant and forward-thinking topics!
Consumer Trends 2025 and beyond
Forward-looking consumer insights inform valuable strategies for retailers. Know your consumers and stay ahead of lifestyle shifts with unrivaled insight into the way they’ll think, feel and behave for years to come. Through detailed and accurate consumer forecasts, hear how consumer behaviors, interests and tastes will shape how consumers live, work and play. Understand how to anticipate big lifestyle shifts within and between generation groups and develop products and services that meet consumer needs.
The evolution of customer engagement with GenAI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping retailers’ relationships with their customers, delivering personalized experiences at scale and driving growth. Deepen your understanding of the role of GenAI across the customer engagement lifecycle and its impact on how future customer experiences will be designed, delivered, and scaled.
AI transforming the retail enterprise
AI (including GenAI) is transforming the retail enterprise internally. Understand the broad impacts AI-enabled solutions are having in areas such as product design, customer support, content development, and no-code/low-code IT development.
Tech’s role in marketing innovation
Innovation in marketing technology (MarTech) is unlocking force-multiplier value for retailers in reaching, acquiring, and retaining a broad customer base. Discover the latest technologies and strategies that support the rise of authentic content marketing, chatbots, voice search, data analytics related to consumer intent, social media marketing, and engaging user experiences. Hear about new advances in cloud technology, new adtech models, the fast-maturing frontier of retail media networks, and the challenges that retailers face with effective marketing due to new privacy controls.
Supercharging Unified Commerce
The future of unified commerce will evolve through advanced technology, integrating AI, IoT, and data analytics for deeper customer insights and personalized experiences. Learn how the next generation of unified commerce promises to redefine shopping experiences by creating more seamless, real-time transactions across multiple touchpoints, combined with fast-evolving technologies like augmented reality and voice commerce. This evolution will focus on further enhancing convenience, personalization, and predictive strategies, thereby reshaping the retail landscape and consumer interactions in a more tech-savvy and customer-centric manner.
Social Commerce Trends and Predictions
In the near-term future, social commerce envisions the seamless integration of shopping within social media platforms, employing advanced AI for personalized recommendations and interactive experiences. Social commerce is evolving into a dynamic space where influencers and user-generated content drive purchasing decisions, blurring the lines between entertainment, social interaction, and e-commerce. Convenience, personalization, and community-driven shopping experiences will revolutionize how many customers discover and buy products online. Understand how to prepare for the next generation of social commerce.
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New Advances in Augmented Reality
Recent advancements in Augmented Reality (AR)and Virtual Reality (VR) technology have the potential to reshape the retail landscape. Enhanced AR applications enable virtual try-on experiences, allowing customers to visualize products in their environment. Hear how these evolving technologies are helping to bridge the gap between physical and digital retail, offering novel and customized shopping experiences.
The Shrinking Divide between Technology, Digital, and Marketing Leaders
A notable leadership transformation is underway as information technology, digital/ecommerce, and marketing teams find themselves working together more closely, and in some respects now have overlapping roles and responsibilities. Leaders across these domains need to embrace a new era of integration and collaboration to drive new growth strategies. How can leaders prepare to manage cross-functional teams that encompass tech, digital and marketing expertise?
Data Stewardship and Governance in Retail
Many of the governance challenges that retailers are facing in privacy, cybersecurity and AI all boil down to the core issue of how retail organizations are stewarding and governing their company’s data. Learn how retail leaders can more efficiently manage and control data access and ensure accountability and compliance with existing laws and regulations.
Tech and Digital Strategies from Port to Porch
The modern retail supply chain integrates an ecosystem of many partnerships taking products from cargo ships to consumers’ homes. Supply chain, fulfillment and last-mile delivery partners can play an important role as an extension of the retail enterprise, and their performance can either improve or harm retailers’ relationships with their customers. Learn how to more effectively leverage your supply chain and develop partnerships that deliver on your customers’ brand expectations.
The Role of Strategic Investing in Guiding Innovation and Getting Retailers into the Investment Game
This panel discusses the recent trend in strategic investing wherein retailers invest in start-up businesses. It answers questions, such as: why is it that large retailers from Walmart to Dollar General and Kroger are making investments in start-ups and tech companies? How can founders harness these opportunities as opposed to traditional venture capital? What are the benefits and downsides?
