Nikki’s screed this week got me thinking about the store. The timing is perfect, as our annual survey asking retailers what they see happening in stores is live as we speak. So I went back and read our report from last summer, just to refresh myself with what retailers were self-identifying as their biggest in-store challenges at the time.

Check it out: In a reinforcement of both the need for stores and a real change in priorities, we saw a significant shift in many perceived business challenges from 2014 to 2015 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Customer Is Not Happy

Source: RSR Research, July 2015

Competitors are just not as important as satisfying customers once they are in the store. Once we get past the most frequently cited business challenge – consumer price sensitivity – we can see almost equal concern over lack of consistency and consumer dissatisfaction with the experience they’re being offered. Adding the option to cite customer complaints yielded results: half of respondents call it out as a top-three issue.

We when we asked the question “How can technology help? ” – the answers were instructive (Figure 2).

Figure 2 : Let’s Grab Some New Customers!

Source: RSR Research, July 2015

Retailers have some high hopes for their soon-to-be technology-empowered employees. And those hopes move away from looking within, shifting straight toward acquiring and retaining customers while taking business from competitors. As we can see in Figure 2, thought processes have shifted dramatically in some cases.

Differences are marginal between Winners and their peers, with Winners more likely to cite technology’s opportunity to create a competitive advantage (42% vs. 35%) and others more likely to cite winning new customers (60% vs. 54%) as a top-three opportunity for technology.

Still we have to return to the data from Figure 2. If retailers haven’t simply provided the option to place an online order in store yet, how much value are they really finding in the technology opportunity? What are they missing? And what’s getting in the way?

Well as Nikki points out in a not-so-shy way this week, the answer may very well be passive attitudes about the store in the first place.