Editor’s Note: At The National Retail Federation’s annual conference in New York City earlier this month, thousands of brands, exhibitors and media discussed the most salient topics in the retail industry. Of particular relevance to marketers: the emphasis on AI investment, in-store experiential, the revenue potential of retail media networks and the challenges of appealing to younger shoppers. Multichannel Marketer, from the Chief Marketer Network, was on the ground to cover it all. Following is an excerpt from the piece; go here to read the full list of takeaways.
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Nearly 40,0000 people attended The National Retail Federation’s annual conference NRF ’25 in New York City in January. The Big Show included 6,200 brands, 1,000 exhibitors, 450 speakers and 400 media/analysts.
I attended; I listened; I learned. Now I’m back with six key takeaways from the conference:
1. If you haven’t invested in A.I. yet, you need to start.
Artificial intelligence was all over the NRF agenda, in the presentations and on the minds of most attendees. For the past year, marketers have tested generative artificial intelligence and incorporated the technology into employee-facing tools and customer-facing experiences. At the show, they talked about the results from these deployments and how they will continue to invest in artificial intelligence.
“AI is becoming transformative for our business and we really haven’t had a technology revolution as large as this since the start of the Internet,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of worldwide Amazon stores.
Herrington touched on a handful of ways Amazon has implemented generative AI, such as AI summary, which displays a summary of all customer reviews. In July 2024, it launched conversational shopping assistant Rufus which uses product details and reviews to answer questions. Shoppers have asked about 500 million questions to Rufus in its six-month life, he said.
“About half of our customer service interactions now are getting touched by generative AI in some form or another, and it’s still higher quality responses with higher customer satisfaction,” Herrington said.
Amazon also is implementing AI in writing product titles, providing apparel fit recommendations, in its robotic arms, among other uses. And it is just getting started.
Azita Martin, vice president and general manager, retail and CPG at computer manufacturing corporation Nvidia, spoke of many ways merchants are using generative artificial intelligence, such as in warehouse planning, inventory forecasting and personalization. She encouraged all retailers that haven’t invested in AI to start by looking at some of their biggest business challenges and assigning teams to discover how AI could solve those issues.
The AI revolution is only going to grow and employees need to have the skills to use it, Martin said.
Generative AI won’t take your job, “but someone using generative AI, may take your job,” Martin said. “So embrace it. It’s a tool that just makes you more productive and it’s going to make you so much smarter.”
2. The store experience needs to be special
While retailers are infusing artificial intelligence into their tech stack, many retailers at NRF emphasized how important the store still is to retail and the need to invest in it. Because shoppers can largely get whatever they need online, if they physically come into a store, merchants have to make it worthwhile for them.
“You have to make it an experience that people want to have,” said Mary Dillon, president and CEO of Foot Locker Inc. in her keynote presentation.
Footlocker is refreshing and modernizing its stores, which includes emphasizing sneaker culture and its store associates. The refreshed stores have an area at the front of the store called the “Drop Zone,” which showcases a hot product, a “fun” area in the center of the store where shoppers try on shoes, plus a basketball section and expanded women’s selection. By the end of 2024, about 67% of its global store feel will be refreshed, she said.
For the full story, head to Multichannel Marketer.
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