Hungry for a glimpse of the future, our retail strategy team attended CES 2019 to discover the latest tech trends impacting the future of marketing. From transportation advances, to health bots, retail revolutions and more, our interconnected digital world appears to be bringing even competitors closer together. Here are a few key highlights and takeaways for marketers to leverage:
The Future of Transportation
CES panelists seemed to be in near universal agreement that there will be a paradigm shift in how we think about automobiles. In the not so distant future, vehicles will be electric and completely autonomous, and nearly two-thirds of the global population will live in urban or suburban “smart cities” with connected transportation systems. In anticipation of these changes, car companies and content providers are already thinking of ways to innovate the experience altogether, identifying ways to take advantage of the freedom passengers will gain once they no longer have to pay attention to the road while in transit.
Health and Wellness
Artificial intelligence is already changing the way we care for our bodies, and it’s only just the beginning. Between Sleep Number’s Smart Bed with Sleep IQ and SKIIN’s smart fabric line, we now have real-time biometric feedback for nearly everything. By updating individuals with critical information collected from their own bodies, technology is helping to give knowledge and power back to the patient. It’s also important to note that data hygiene and regulatory compliance is instrumental in the future of these developments.
The Future of Retail
Dominating the forecast? Friction reduction. Consumers are demanding more from retailers now more than ever — glitchy websites, low stock and irrelevant ads make for more than enough motivation to spend dollars elsewhere. To close this expectation gap, retailers at CES showed us how collected physical data can provide personalization like we’ve never seen and how robots, yes, robots, are poised to reduce friction in a myriad of ways ranging from suggesting complementary or replacement products to identifying the exact location of a certain item. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Connected Ecosystem
The future of connected technology is reliant upon brand partnerships. According to a handful of influential voices at CES, tech incompatibility between big brands is out… and coexisting is in. A synergistic effect is created when trusted brands share data and work together in harmony. Kellen Xu of Samsung Smart Things said it best when she recited:
