Spain Fujitsu focuses on the future at Retail Solutions 2007

Fujitsu Services, one of Europe’s leading IT services companies, will be taking a look at the future of retailing at this year’s Retail Solutions show, at the NEC in Birmingham from 5-7 June.

This year’s Retail Solutions exhibition sees the launch of the Store of the Future, a purpose-built shop showcasing the technologies that will be deployed across the high-street over the next few years, with technology provided by Fujitsu. Commenting on the Store of the Future, Dr Mark Dorgan, European retail partner at Fujitsu Services said: “The customer experience is growing in importance and the pressure is on for retailers to provide an innovative shopping experience. The Store of the Future will demonstrate a number of new and future technologies available to help retailers deliver a more integrated multi-channel shopping experience.”

The Future Food area in the store will focus on ‘empowering the consumer’ and will see technologies such as self-checkout, electronic shelf-edge labelling, digital media networks and contactless payment solutions on show.

The Future Department Store area will take visitors through a new paradigm in personal assisted shopping, showcasing devices such as palm vein technology, smart changing room technologies (e.g. automatically requesting complementary items or alternative sizes) and RFID tags. The focus will be on enabling retailers to improve the customer experience by offering enhanced service in-store and thereby increasing basket size and growing loyalty.

In a seminar session on the opening day of the show, (Tuesday 5 June), Sarah Kellett, retail industry consultant at Fujitsu Services will be exploring the Store of the Future with a focus on what’s in store for the 21st century shopper.

On day two of the show (Wednesday 6 June) Bill Waterson, UK head of retail at Fujitsu Services will also be revealing results of independent research into consumer attitudes towards multi-channel and self-service technologies. Surprising results reveal that consumer expectations of retailers’ self-service and multi-channel capabilities are high. The research will challenge retailers to respond to customer’s increasing acceptance of new and future technologies to facilitate the shopping experience.