In today’s increasingly crowded digital commerce market and with increasingly tighter budgets, retailers have to make smart choices about which technologies to invest in and which they should forego for now. To help retailers sift through the options, we conduct an annual top trends study. This year, we interviewed more than 30 retail industry professionals to ask about retail technology investments. Read this year’s top retail technology report to gain insights into which technologies retailers are investing in and at what level.

We analyzed our research findings and segmented the technologies into “hot,” “on the radar,” and “hype” categories. From our interviews, we categorized technologies accordingly:

Hot (top investment priorities for 2018)

  • Omnichannel
  • Advanced data and analytics
  • Personalization
  • Digital store tech
  • AI (moved up to the “hot” category this year)

On The Radar (some investments)

  • Chatbots
  • Subscriptions services
  • Experience centers
  • Same-day delivery
  • Automated checkout

Hype (lowest investment priority)

  • IoT
  • Conversational commerce
  • PWAs (progressive web apps)
  • VR/AR
  • Marketplaces

Knowing which technologies are at the top of our list this year is just scratching the surface. Retailers need to understand their customer pain points and evaluate which of these solutions will deliver the highest ROI. For more information on why certain technologies are at the top, what use cases are out there for each technology, and what next steps you should take, see the full report.