Retail Trends: “Apple has completely eliminated the cash register”

The folks over at DealNews gave me a call to chat about a few of the trends I see occurring in the world of retail.

My main comments?

“From an interaction perspective, Apple has completely eliminated the checkout line,” says Jim Carroll, a retail futurist trends and innovation expert based in Toronto. “Cash registers have disappeared, and that’s a pretty significant change. It’s weird when you pay them through one of these iPhone devices and just walk out — and in five years we’ll see a lot more retailers doing that.”

What’s Ahead: Advertisements That Talk to You

In terms of the future, experts say that you can bet on mobile and digital technology playing even bigger roles in the retail shopping experience. “Ten years ago, cardboard end-cap displays were stuffed with a product at the end of an aisle,” Carroll says. “Today it’s all about screens everywhere. When you start to link it to smartphones, it gets very interesting. Soon we’ll see customized commercials in the store: ‘Hey Jim, we’ve got a deal for you in aisle number seven.'”

The first point is significant, and will become even more so once near-field-communication chips become ubiquitous, our plastic credit cards disappear, and our smartphones effectively become cash registers. There’s a lot of *profound* change going on in the world, and I’ve given talks to numerous organizations on these trends, including one for folks at the global HQ of The GAP.

The second point is something I’ve been talking about for over a decade. There’s even a video clip where I speak about the trends at play here — “Cardboard People, Plasma People!” I use the story to talk about innovation, but it also puts into perspective my thoughts on what happens when personal, interactive in-store promotional videos become routine.

You can check out the full article here.