Hard to believe, but we’re about to publish our 9th annual Merchandising Report in just a few days. And while it’s safe to say that retail merchandising has undergone massive transformation since we started RSR back in 2007, what we find this year surprises even us. Retailers have some really big technology changes coming in the near-term future.

Of course a retailer’s assortment has always been important. But in the digital age, with customers becoming increasingly demanding – and powerful – it has become a matter of make or break. How a retailer merchandises is a strong indicator of how successful the entire enterprise will be.

This year, new consumer shopping behaviors have made the merchandising process infinitely more difficult. Consumers just don’t shop the way they did a few years, months, or in some cases, even weeks ago. As a result, retailers are crying out for a better understanding of consumer demand. Analytics to measure consumers’ paths to purchase (and post-purchase) behaviors offer an ability to do just that. Unfortunately, what we find is that their understanding of these same tools and techniques dramatically lags behind their appetite. Here are just a few of the highlights of this report (which will release this Thursday, December 10):

• Retail Winners have a completely different view of the merchandising landscape. For these over-performers, there is no greater challenge than understanding evolving customer preferences. They understand that virtually everything else – out of stocks, inventory issues, pricing strategies – are all influenced by the new ways consumers are shopping stores, in their homes, at work, and on their mobile devices in between.
• While challenges abound, the most successful retailers will always find a way to convert challenges into opportunity. As it relates to merchandising in 2015, Winners put on a tutorial showing how that is done.
• Given their perceived inhibitors (better data faster), it’s not surprising to see Winners most frequently interested in improving their inventory processes and systems as a solution. It’s also not surprising to see them looking for real-time visibility into deviations from expectations. It is however, quite surprising to see how many want to change their organizational structures.
• And it’s become clear that retailers of all sorts are planning big changes to their portfolios. In fact, a significant percentage of retailers are contemplating a refresh of core merchandising systems.

As always, we’ll have lots of data behind these findings, and we’ll also offer several in-depth and pragmatic suggestions on how retailers should proceed. We will be certain to email you on Thursday as soon as the full report is available!