Are we looking at a future where you can pay for chicken nuggets with your face? The short answer is quite probably, thanks to innovations in tech in the retail sector.
Newly floated OneMarket aims to revolutionise shopping through the use of big data at a global level, creating a network of collaborating retailers and retail venues. The company was established last year from Westfield Labs and Westfield Retail Solutions, which were internal innovation engines for the Australian retail giant. However, Westfield (which runs the two biggest shopping centres in Europe, both in London) felt the advantages of new technology were much greater when applied more widely than just to its own shopping centres and their tenants.
The company is focusing on key areas including identifying consumers, communicating with consumers, location data and what it calls 'logic capabilities' – algorithms which can use that data to provide 'predictive insights' about consumer behaviour to participants in its network.
Forget credit cards, data will transform consumer behaviour
OneMarket has so far launched five products, including interactive digital receipts, which allow retailers and shopping venues to engage shoppers after a transaction both online and in-store, and a shopper profile product which will let retailers and shopping centres 'access and download individual shopper profiles of consumers with a unique identifier and multiple behavioural and purchase attributes'.
The company is mainly targeting shopping centres and retailers in Western Europe and the US, but is expected to turn its attention to Asia Pacific, where consumers are mobile-savvy and inclined to share their information, in time.
It’s not just OneMarket, a substantial part of the proptech business is focusing on the retail sector, the first segment of the real estate market to take a hit from e-commerce and thus a sector which has had to be ahead of the game.
Amazon Go, the checkout-less convenience store launched in the US by Amazon in early 2018, is probably the most well-known example of an ‘all in one retail format’. Others are Chinese firms Dalian Wanda, Tencent Holdings and Gaopeng who plan to launch a tech joint venture 'that will integrate online and offline businesses'.
The trio’s plans are not dissimilar to OneMarket’s, in that they aim to network offline shopping data from Wanda Plazas with online data from Tencent’s social media and e-commerce platforms. From there, a future where you can pay for your chicken nuggets in KFC with facial recognition is not far away.
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