It’s been an incredibly busy summer here at RSR, and hard enough as it is to believe, we’re already planning our 2015 agenda. We’re never big on “crystal ball ” predictions, but as Q3 comes to a close, we’re feeling locked in enough to chart the majority of what we’d like to study in the next 15 months.

That “locked in ” comes with a caveat though. If there’s one thing we’re not shy about, we know full well there are things we just don’t know. As a result, we’re taking a page from something we tried this year: leaving TBD slots in our research calendar.

What does this mean? It means that while we know there are certain topics we’re certain are “hot ” enough to warrant year-over-year benchmarks (spoiler alert: we’ll be doing a Mobile Study in 2015, and another Store Report, as well), we’ve kept 2 of the 13 surveys scheduled to run wide open. One will launch in March and another in September. We truly have no idea what topics these surveys will cover, nor what form they might become as reports. It’s exciting, and leaves us the flexibility to do a couple of things. One – should a new topic surface between now and March that has the industry “buzzing ” enough for us to benchmark how retailers are tackling it, well, we’ve got a space for that. Again, we know there are things we can’t yet know.

But even more importantly, there’s the stuff we just flat-out don’t know. And that’s where our relationship with you – our community – comes in. What do you think we should be studying? Are there topics within retail – right now – that you don’t feel get adequate coverage?

Either way, we certainly hope you’ll join us for the upcoming webinar where we announce what we’ve got coming down the pike in 2015. We won’t just be giving you a list of topics; we’ll be sharing the data points that emerged from this year’s research that led us towards these fields of study – the rationale behind our ideas – and what’s more, discussing what our going-in assumptions will be for 2015 results. In the end, that’s what the data is for: keeping our entire community sharp by either supporting – or refuting – our own personal deductions. We can’t wait, and you can register for the event here.

Hope to see you there!