Enhancing shopping experiences in smart retailing

The retailing market has undergone a paradigm-shift in the last decades, departing from its traditional form of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores towards online shopping and the establishment of shopping malls. As a result, “small” independent retailers operating in urban environments have suffered a substantial reduction of their turnover. This situation could be presumably reversed if retailers were to establish business “alliances” targeting economies of scale and engage themselves in providing innovative digital services. The SMARTBUY ecosystem realizes the concept of a “distributed shopping mall”, which allows retailers to join forces and unite in a large commercial coalition that generates added value for both retailers and customers. Along this line, the SMARTBUY ecosystem offers several novel features: (i) inventory management of centralized products and services, (ii) geo-located marketing of products and services, (iii) location-based search for products offered by neighboring retailers, and (iv) personalized recommendations for purchasing products derived by an innovative recommendation system. SMARTBUY materializes a blended retailing paradigm which combines the benefits of online shopping with the attractiveness of traditional shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. This article provides an overview of the main architectural components and functional aspects of the SMARTBUY ecosystem. Then, it reports the main findings derived from a 12 months-long pilot execution of SMARTBUY across four European cities and discusses the key technology acceptance factors when deploying alike business alliances

Enhanced buying experiences in smart cities: The SMARTBUY approach

The establishment of shopping malls and the growth of online shopping increasingly diminishes the turnover of “small”, independent retailers in urban environments. However, retailers could reverse this trend through complementing the offline experiences they already offer with online offerings and establishing business “alliances” to achieve economies of scale and enable the provision of innovative digital services. The EU-funded project SMARTBUY aims at realizing the concept of a “distributed shopping mall” ecosystem which allows retailers to band together in a large commercial coalition which generates added-value for its retailers-members and customers: centralized products and services inventory management; geo-located marketing of products/services; location-based search for products offered by nearby retailers; personalized recommendations for purchasing products based on innovative recommendation systems. In effect, SMARTBUY proposes a blended shopping paradigm, wherein the benefits of online shopping are combined with the appeal of traditional store shopping. The article provides an overview of the main outcomes and achievements of SMARTBUY. It also reports on conclusions drawn in the context of the project’s official pilot execution in four European cities