Technology

The Future of Retail Metrics

There is an advantage to looking at the larger retail landscape and applying the lessons learned to food retail. I had the pleasure of speaking with Rod Sides, vice chairman, U.S. retail and distribution leader, Deloitte LLP about how changes in ...

Blockchain: It’s Not “If” But “When”

Blockchain is just a way to collect data on the goods that retailers use. The competitive advantage between retailers will be their ability to use that data to transform their business....

How Does FMI Know the State of the Food Retail Industry?

The first ever The Food Retailing Industry Speaks (Speaks) report appeared in 1949. Seventy years later, this report continues to provide the food retail industry with important benchmarks, facts and figures that are used in our advocacy work on ...

We have an EMV, Now What?

It is hard to believe, but October 2019 will mark four years since the card brand-imposed liability shift went into effect, requiring retailers to invest significant time, resources, and capital to accept “chip” cards in their stores. Now that we ...

The Promise of Artificial Intelligence for Food Retail

At the recent Annual Meat Conference in Dallas, a roomful of attendees were baffled by what sounded like a simple question: “How often do you interact with artificial intelligence?” The fact is that, increasingly, in our everyday lives we encounter ...

It’s Still Early in Food Retail’s Digital Ball Game

According to a group of industry experts at Groceryshop 2018, if the ongoing digitization of food retail were a baseball game, the food retail industry is in the second inning....

The Boardroom’s Perspective of The Future of Retail

For the fourth year, FMI and Oliver Wyman have teamed up to provide thought leadership on the most pressing issues facing the food retail industry. The annual edition of Boardroom takes readers directly into the C-Suite of food retail companies and ...

Learning Differently in 2018

People learn in different ways. Some of us are visual learners. Others better retain information by hearing things explained. Another group learns best from performing its own research. Some prefer having a hands-on experience and others just want ...

FMI’s 2018 Financial Diversity

Providing the retail food industry with the myriad products and services that FMI offers requires resources—both human and financial capital. To avoid being a one-pronged fork, any well-run business endeavors to diversify its revenue sources and FMI ...

FMI’s Strategic X’s and O’s in 2018

What is true for the industry is reflected in the life of its trade association. 2018 has been a year of the need for FMI to pay attention to where we plot our X’s while carefully watching out for those sneaky O’...

Is Your Data an Enterprise Asset?

Data has been at the center of many discussions and presentations for years. Big data and small, for many retailers and brands data is not the strategy, but the intel that informs or supports a broader product and/or consumer engagement ...

The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Food Retail

A lot of futuristic movies and TV shows portray a society where robots or Artificial Intelligence (AI) take on a lot of the more mundane tasks in society. In Star Trek you can order a meal from a wall panel, in the Jetsons the dog, Astro, is walked ...

Strategizing for the Future: We’ve Launched FMItech@Midwinter

We’ve launched FMItech@, a new feature at FMI Midwinter Executive Conference, placing the spotlight on technology. We’ll delve deep into proven and emerging trends and their applications for your businesses. Through FMItech@, we’ve added Tech Talks, ...

If You Think Your Customers Don’t Care About Accurate Product Knowledge—Think Again

Here’s some news: When shoppers are at home, they’re often staring at their computer screens to get information about the products they want BEFORE they hit your food retail aisles. Retail Dive tells us 67 percent of shoppers research products ...

Photo Friday: Amazon Go Store Tour

This week, Hannah Walker, senior director, technology and nutrition policy, Food Marketing Institute, immersed herself in a digital shopper experience at the newest AmazonGo store in Chicago with Lee Foley, a member of the Amazon Public Policy team. ...