Find out how retailers performed during the critical 2019 Christmas trading period with our league table comparing sales.

In a new of Mobility in Retail report by SOTI Inc., it’s reported that shoppers want a ‘personalised in-store experience via mobile devices, but are unwilling to sacrifice personal data security’.

The report also found that 67.3 percent of consumers perceive mobile technology as the ‘most effective way to provide a faster shopping experience’. Moreover, 76 percent want ‘in-store staff to use mobile devices to provide a better in-store experience’. With this in mind, one third (32.6 percent) of consumers are unwilling to sacrifice their personal data to improve their shopping experience.

“Retailers need to implement modern strategies to stay relevant and wake up to the fact that consumers want mobile and IoT technologies which enhance and personalise the shopping experience,” explains Shash Anand, Vice President of Product Strategy at SOTI. “It’s essential that retailers integrate these business-critical technologies into their business to ensure they can deliver the speed, convenience and customisation that employees and customers expect. As the online and offline worlds continue to merge, the time for retailers to invest in mobility and IoT solutions is now.”

The report also found that one third (31.4 percent) of consumers are comfortable with ’emerging delivery methods such as delivery drones’, and 26.9 percent accept the idea of autonomous vehicle delivery.

“Retailers who rely on mobile technology need to ensure the technology works because customers want to find what they need quickly, pay for their purchases and get on with their day. Retailers must ensure they have a trusted mobility and IoT management solution in place to ensure in-store technologies work all the time, the way they’re supposed to, with no downtime, while ensuring security and compliance,” Anand says.

Last month I made an online order for additional SoftTiles foam play mats. I ordered light gray to match those already in the room. But I received dark gray mats in error. I called customer service and explained the discrepancy. The rep quickly apologized and submitted an order for the correct color. That’s it. There was no request for me to return the wrong items shipped. There was no additional effort or cost on my part. I received the correct order and kept the incorrect one. This experience quickly reminded me of recent stories about Amazon taking this same approach (returnless refunds). Of course, returnless refunds is only one of many ways in which Amazon is taking e-commerce fulfillment and customer service to the next level.

Given my recent buying experience, I thought I would use this post to provide my perspective on the competitive dynamics in today’s e-commerce world and the important role of fulfillment services in this domain.

As big-box stores and smaller merchants prioritize expedited delivery, the competition for the speediest shipping is becoming costly.

E-commerce giant Amazon AMZN, -0.85%  is taking deliveries to the next level with a hefty investment of money and expanding its network to deliver packages in a single day.

Amazon’s Prime membership was a game-changer in e-commerce when it was unveiled in 2005. The promise of guaranteed, unlimited two-day shipping made the tech giant the big kahuna in retail. Since then the company has upped the ante to fulfill customer orders fast.

What is speedy shipping costing companies?

The cost to ship an item overnight can range from $45 to $120, according to First Insight, a retail analytics platform.

“Consumers want their products in the shortest amount of time possible and that’s what is driving demand for speedy shipping and forcing retailers to figure out the best logistical cycle to get products to them,” said Greg Petro, chief executive of First Insight.

Many people who shop for groceries online include fresh produce in their virtual carts.

The Packer recently surveyed more than 1,500 consumers about online grocery and produce. Among those respondents who had shopped for groceries online in the last 60 days, more than half had purchased fresh produce items as part of those orders. Most significantly, 90% of that group said they planned to buy online again in the future.

Cold storage and distribution is one of the hottest growth areas in distribution. In Burley, Idaho, NewCold has built its second North American freezer DC to manage the distribution of frozen foods for McCain Foods, the world’s largest manufacturer of frozen French fries and potato specialties.

The Kroger Co. named Frederick, Md., as the site for a previously announced Ocado-powered automated warehouse expected to open in about two years.

Kroger said Thursday that the 350,000-square-foot customer fulfillment center (CFC) will be constructed at 7106 Geoffrey Way in Frederick and fill online grocery orders for shoppers in Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. In February 2019, Kroger unveiled plans to build a robotics-driven Ocado CFC in the Mid-Atlantic region but hadn’t specified a location.

The company started selling its collaborative robots more than 10 years ago, and has become the leader in a category which it effectively created.

At the time, collaborative robots were unheard of, and industrial robots were always thought of as big, powerful machines which needed to be caged off in case of danger to human workers.

Collaborative robots were specifically designed to be used by humans who may be in close proximity, without fences, or even in direct contact.

Hence the name “collaborative robot”, or “cobot”, and a specific ISO standard which defines what a collaborative robot is.

In 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov played a highly publicized match against Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer built to take down the world’s best players. Kasparov won the match 4-2, writing afterward about the inflexibility in the supercomputer's logic, joking that he thought he still had a “few years left.”

He was wrong. One year later, an upgraded Deep Blue – capable of evaluating 200 million moves per second – won the rematch.

These chess matches are a fascinating example of the speed at which technology moves. It wasn’t that long ago that the first computers were limited to a few specific applications. By 1996, they were capable of outflanking one of the greatest chess players ever.

Today, they are fundamentally altering the way we live and work.

Instacart announced today a series of new features for its Pickup service, as well as the appointment of a new general manager, Sarah Mastrorocco, to lead the Instacart Pickup product and team. The grocery pickup service has been steadily growing alongside Instacart delivery, having tripled the number of states and doubled the number of grocery partners offering a pickup option in 2019, the company says. Today, Instacart is upgrading Pickup with the addition of a new digital storefronts feature, plus better tools for managing pickups, including alerts to signal the store you’re on the way, better mapping tools and more. Instacart Pickup also expanded to include alcohol pickup across more than 20 retail partners, including Aldi, BevMo!, Publix, Save Mart, Sprouts and Wegmans, among others.

In total, Instacart Pickup reaches more than 50 grocery partners, like Food Lion, Gelson’s, Publix, Price Chopper, Schnucks, Shop ‘n Save, The Fresh Market, Wegmans and more.

To make pickups easier, Instacart is introducing a single digital storefront for each grocer on its platform, allowing customers to toggle between delivery and pickup options in order to see the current inventory by store and compare time windows for both delivery and pickup services.

When customers place an order online, Alphabot retrieves uses autonomous carts to retrieve products. Robots assemble orders and then send them to a human associate to check order accuracy, bag them and complete their delivery. Alphabot will manage all shelf-stable, refrigerated and frozen products, but fresh products will continue to be picked by Walmart associates.

The Alphabot test has been in place since the middle of last year and Walmart plans to improve the service with an eye towards a broader rollout. Walmart does not foresee the warehouse becoming a feature in every store but possibly having one mini-warehouse supporting customers in the service area of multiple Walmart locations. The retailer has two new Alphabot-enabled warehouses planned, both of which will be smaller than the Salem test location.

The system is called Alphabot. It uses small wheeled robots that roll along long steel rails, surrounded by shelves containing plastic bins. Each bin holds some commonplace item — mustard, taco seasoning, pistachio nuts, and so on. There’s a refrigerated section, so customers can order chilled or frozen foods.

The shelves are about as long as a basketball court and three stories high. Each robot has geared wheels that let it climb up or down through horizontal shafts. When it reaches the right level, the robot rolls up to the correct bin, plucks it from the shelf, then descends to a packing station. The robot passes the bin to a Walmart worker who picks out the correct item and plops it into a different bin lined with standard grocery bags.

When the order is complete, a robot grabs the bin and shuttles it over to a station where a worker puts it on a cart and wheels it away.

It may seem futuristic, but according to John Lert, founder of Alert Innovation, his system in part evokes an earlier era: 100 years ago, a grocery shopper would tell a clerk what he wanted, and the clerk would go out back to fetch it.

From our 2018 files:

Walmart announced last week that it will begin deploying robots to help fulfill grocery pickup-up orders within it stores. While I have been critical of Walmart’s nearly every other week PR routine since Marc Lore came on board, this week’s announcement is big.

Walmart plans to partner with startup Alert Innovation to deploy "first of its kind automation to help associates fill online grocery orders faster than ever before." The robotic automation technology, what it calls Alphabot, will arrive via a test in one of its New Hampshire stores by the end of the current year. The plan is to utilize an adjacent 20,000 square foot warehouse extension to the store and to test robotic storage and retrieval of Walmart’s buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS)  and ship-from-store grocery orders.

Grocery shopping is completely different than it was 50 years ago. Fresh groceries and meal kits can now be dropped off at your doorstep. Retailers are redesigning their warehouses for online shopping. Robots adorned with googly eyes alert staff of spills.

What’s next for the future of food shopping?

The delivery box is part of Yale's expanded range of smart security products beyond door locks. Its cabinet lock (as you might expect) can secure cabinets or drawers to protect valuables and other sensitive items. Again, you'll receive notifications whenever someone opens or closes the lock. You can fix it to a drawer or cabinet using an adhesive or screws. The lock will run you $79 or $129 with the bridge.