Short Case

Technology and the retail revolution

Not everyone predicts a golden future for internet retailing. The sociologist Professor Laurie Taylor believes that hi-tech shopping is doomed unless it pays more attention to people’s psychological needs. ‘People welcome advice,’ he says, ‘especially when buying such items as clothes, electrical goods and home decoration where they feel they need guidance.’ Retailers must try to bring back conversation into shopping: ‘Banishing customers to the remote and impersonal bank teller machines was a huge mistake,’ he says, ‘because banks lost all those wonderful human contacts as well as the chance to sell customers life insurance and pensions.’

This may also limit the potential of selling through the internet. ‘The most successful businesses sell books and CDs where people know exactly what they want to buy and the product goes through the letterbox.’ Businesses where customers are less sure about what they want to buy and where products cannot be delivered through the mail may not be the best candidates for technology-based selling.

Questions1 From your own experience, what are the major technologies now being

used in high-contact retailing (that is, not ‘mail order’ retailing) in addition to the ones mentioned above?

2 What are the advantages which most of these technologies give?3 Do you think Professor Laurie Taylor is right in his criticisms of technology

in retail operations?