From Unified Commerce to Dynamic Pricing: Retail Tech Trends to Watch in 2025

2024 has been another year of constant change for retailers. Technology and AI tools continue to evolve rapidly. Stores like yours have an array of options to better serve customers and impact your revenue goals.

Heading into the ShopTalk and NACS conferences, we expected to hear plenty of new ideas from attendees about efforts to transform the in-store experience. Which technologies are ready for adoption? What are the major hiccups everyone in the industry has been working to overcome?

Instead, the biggest topic at the top of everyone’s mind came down to marketing. As we head into 2025, your business needs to pursue every opportunity to better engage with consumers. Here are some topics to keep in mind when considering how to modernize your retail system for the future. 

Unified Commerce Keeps Your Customer in Focus

Eliminating the divide between the in-store and online experience has been an ongoing area of focus for retailers. The ability to buy online and pickup in store (or BOPIS) is more than an established norm for many customers. It’s also only the beginning.

If your customer starts an online transaction at home, your retail system should create a unified experience once they come into the store. For example, your POS platform will recognize your customer by a unique ID established online. If the items they purchase don’t match what was put in their online cart, you can prompt customers about these additional items they were browsing. Then, your system can offer the option to have any additional items shipped directly to their home.

Modern retail systems allow you to meet customers where they are. When they want to buy and how they want to buy should be a major focus. If your brand’s audience is accustomed to purchasing with Venmo or Bitcoin, your POS platform needs to accommodate them.

A system that recognizes and anticipates your customer’s interests doesn’t just offer a way to increase sales. It also drives customer loyalty for your brand by ensuring they don’t leave anything they need behind.

Loyalty Programs Drive Stronger Retail Businesses

Loyalty is everything in a perpetually crowded marketplace. Nurturing customer relationships is one way to drive loyalty, but more retailers are turning to loyalty programs as a way to offer incentives to their customers. 

Offering discounts and rewards to members does more than inspire return visits from consumers. They also produce a wealth of data about purchase trends and demographics that can then be targeted through AI.

AI-powered recommendations and discounts on items your customers buy offer a compelling way to anticipate your customer’s needs. But your business has to be careful when implementing these options in a new retail system. There’s a fine line between offering a bonus that benefits your sales goals and creating the impression your customers are being watched.

Ensuring your business has consent to gather information from consumers will be crucial to gathering actionable data and using it wisely in 2025. Working with a POS modernization partner who understands privacy laws and best practices ensures you avoid potentially alienating customers.

Dynamic Pricing and In-Store Ads Based on Individual Habits

As AI has evolved, the technology continues to present new opportunities for retailers. Once your business has a clear understanding of how your customer wants their data used, you can unlock new possibilities for the in-store shopping experience.

Dynamic pricing also enables you to adjust prices for local events such as tailgating for a big game to improve your store’s competitive advantage. Or you can offer discounts to members on critical household items during weather events such as storms or heatwaves.

Through AI-powered computer vision, modern retail systems can recognize details about your customer to reshape what they see in your stores and how much it costs. Advertisements on endcaps can change depending on your customer’s interests or purchase history, and you can adjust pricing accordingly.

With the ability to apply customer attribution, you can also identify a relationship between the ads your stores serve and how effectively they contribute to a purchase. In a sense, opening this avenue for in-person shopping enables your retail business to also function as an in-store advertising provider that generates additional revenue.

Convenience Retailers Exploring Transformed Customer Environments

Every retailer has needed to evolve its in-store experience in response to shifting consumer habits. But maybe no sector faces as steep a challenge as convenience stores.

Though sales are still strong, fuel utilization has changed dramatically in recent years. Along with increased hybrid and EV sales, a Ford F150 that once earned 15 miles per gallon now gets nearly 25. Consequently, these businesses are shifting their approach to the customer experience.

More retailers are offering pre-made organic and healthy fast options with sit-down dining that mark a step up from overly processed foods. Company-owned coffee shop environments allow customers to better relax or get work done while using EV charging stations. Plus, stores are exploring building proprietary charging stations to break with established providers. That way, they can control the experience and apply those sales to their customer loyalty programs.

Stores in smaller markets now offer walking spaces, pet areas, and other amenities that appeal to locals as well as travelers. Convenience retailers need to ensure their systems can support this shift and offer a better customer experience to stay competitive.

Enhanced Self-Checkout Remains a Work in Progress

Retailers remain committed to offering self-checkout, but reducing inventory loss is still an ongoing challenge. Combinations of RFID, computer vision, and weighted scales are still being explored, but so far, no one has created a true solution.

If self-checkout is right for your customer, you also need to consider its in-store placement. One retailer we spoke with couldn’t get people to use self-checkout because it caused congestion in areas of the store. You have to remain mindful of the logistics and user adoption to ensure self-checkout is worth the time and cost of implementation.

Rely on Experts for a Successful POS Modernization in 2025

One of the major challenges in understanding where to focus your business in 2025 is the simple fact that every retailer is different. How do you ensure you meet customers where they are? How can you inform them of the products they want before they know they want them? And, just as importantly, how can you anticipate their preferred method of payment and delivery.

Investing in a new retail system is expensive. And it’s a risky investment if the information you’re using to guide your decisions doesn’t truly represent your customer’s needs. You also need to make the right plan to roll out your new systems to ensure your stores adopt them without disrupting operations.

When you work with Kitestring, you gain an experienced partner at the forefront of retail system modernization. We do more than ensure your POS system delivers a positive customer experience. We also ensure it’s implemented in a way that’s sustainable and resolves key problems for your business.

If this sounds like an approach that will help your business in 2025 — and beyond — we should talk.