siliconindia | | December 20189The rapid technological advancement and growth in the FMCG and apparel industry has created new standards in retail, but importantly it has created new standards in customer expectations as wellshopping'. In a nutshell, brands and aggregators that don't innovate fast enough might be left behind. Delivering a seamless experience across all consum-er touch points (social media, brick-and-mortar, online, mobile, and many others) has dominated, especially the retail industry consistently. While omnichannel is one of the best ways to choose, it all comes down to gather-ing enough information about the customers and target audience. Technological innovation is giving brands the opportunity to collect mass quantities of customer data, but the pricking problem of putting it to work in the right way remains. The rapid technological advancement and growth in the FMCG and apparel industry has created new standards in retail, but importantly, it has created new standards in customer expectations as well. In addition to competing for new customers, brands are investing in ways to re-tain the customers they have. More independent stores, better curation of products, international categories and technology is driving this. Adding to the interesting trends that the apparel industry is seeing right now is `Mobile commerce'. This concept is on the rise and social media is likely to be a bigger part of that in the future. Chatbots are also offering another way of buying through social media platforms like Facebook Messenger. Brands like H&M are experimenting with shoppable chatbots. We see this development as next-level personalization in action. Companies need to identify the trends and innovate products around them. For example, the surge of digiti-zation of retail stores and cafeterias in India with intro-duction of gen-next softwares, omnichannel point of sale, mobile apps for self-checkout and self-ordering. The list of trends seen this year doesn't end yet. Talking about apparel, the emergence of fast fash-ion, rise of smart wear (like fitness wearables), surge of sustainable fashion (brands like North face and dres-den are upcycling waste and introducing concepts like bio-synthetic fibers) and embracing digital technologies (startups like stylumia in India are adding intelligence to fashion through trend spotting to help brands grow in a strategic way) are going to revolutionize this industry by providing the world with affordable, locally-made and sustainable fashion.In a market that is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020 and growing at a CAGR of eight percent, disrup-tion caused by the revolutionary pace of digital access has made retailers rethink their strategy for growth. Indian re-tail market is $672 billion at present, with modern trade expected to grow at 20 percent per annum, according to several reports. As the industry today stands on the cusp of a new future, driven by innovation, improving oper-ations and growing consumption, international retailers are bullish about growth prospects in India. On that note, Walmart and Target's entry to India this year is remark-able. India being the fifth-largest global destination in the retail space, apparel retailers are attempting to adapt to customer trends and new technology that will allow the consumers' shopping experience to be more enjoyable and satisfactory in the year 2019.
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