Key Takeaways from the Inaugural NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific

Last month marked the inaugural, highly anticipated NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show Asia Pacific. This retail-focused event unfolded over three action-packed days, from June 11 to 13, at the center of the world’s most diverse retail market.

Over 5,000 attendees and 253 global industry leaders and solution providers, from across 52 countries, gathered in the iconic Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre in Singapore. They convened to share regionally tailored retail insights, as well as game-changing technology that will empower retailers to drive growth in their own businesses across Asia Pacific.

From top-tier thought leadership to the latest tech innovations—such as groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality, machine learning, facial recognition, and robotics—here are key takeaways from NRF APAC 2024.

Delivering a seamless digital journey to customers

As Christopher Thomas Moore of Domino’s Pizza said in the opening keynote, “a fanatical obsession with the customer wins every time.” This sentiment underpinned every panel, address, and engagement.

In recent years, fundamental shifts in consumer behaviors and expectations have catalyzed rapid digital transformation across the retail sector. Understanding these changes is key to delivering a seamless digital customer experience (CX).

From personalized recommendations, promotions, and customer service to AI shopping assistants and fast, transparent product delivery, retailers must embrace the tech revolution. They must diligently consider the digital customer journey from pre-purchase to post-purchase. Domino’s transformation into a digital-first business is a noteworthy example. It directly engaged with customers and frontline team members to innovate with purpose and intent.

This success story contributes to the AWS vision of powering business growth through customer-obsessed digital innovation. Using timely, accurate data not only demonstrates the business value of transformation, but also encourages the necessary buy-in from company leaders and teams—and, critically, customer adoption.

Creating superior in-store experiences

In his address, Poh Chi Chuan, Singapore Tourism Board’s executive director of exhibitions and conferences, discussed how consumers are increasingly seeking emotional connections—often through experiences with brands and products. Despite ongoing digital and omnichannel transformation, brick-and-mortar stores aren’t going away anytime soon. Stores remain a popular destination for shoppers to discover, research, see, feel, and buy products. This provides an incredible opportunity for retailers, which can create immersive in-store experiences that extend beyond the merely transactional.

From Moët Hennessy’s boutique pop-up stores to CapitaLand’s Funan DigitaLife Mall, forward-thinking companies are surprising and delighting customers by providing diverse sensory and interactive experiences that deepen brand engagement. Through the reimagination and revitalization of retail spaces, companies can create unique moments that unite people.

A tour featuring Singapore’s most exciting stores brought this concept to life. Using CX-centric design, these stores are pushing the boundaries of innovation. Taking in the aspirational Porsche studio, LivSpace’s sleek Experience Center for home interior solutions, Birkenstock’s traditional cobbler shop look and feel, Bells Baking’s mix of educational and creative culinary spaces, Don Don Donki’s dazzling maximalist display of Japanese kitsch, and an explosion of color and scents at the iconic Coach heritage building, each in-store experience was distinct—carefully curated to be both completely authentic to the brand and relevant to its customers.

Powering customer-experience transformation

From the conference room to the innovation lab and expo hall, attendees learned how the latest technologies are critical to enhancing the CX, driving better decision-making, and improving business performance for retailers.

However, as Wesfarmers’ OneDigital Managing Director Nicole Sheffield summarized, “it doesn’t matter how great your technology is, if the customer doesn’t understand how to use it.” She revealed the transformative power of integrated customer data across brands, which helped Wesfarmers deliver relevant products and individually tailored customer experiences.

Several speakers emphasized that for transformation, passionate people are as important as the right tech solutions. Turning staff into change champions and experience advocates empowers them to take ownership of new processes—which, ultimately, leads to better customer service.

This means ensuring that everyone recognizes the why of CX transformation and its practical applications and benefits. One core strategy is to adopt an incremental approach to large transformation projects, bringing stakeholders along by delivering small wins with low risk and disruption to the business.

It’s also crucial to understand how to implement a large transformation project. Mandy Ross, Super Retail Group’s chief information and digital officer, explained that transformation must first and foremost be business-led instead of technology-led. While retail often revolves around day-to-day operations, it’s essential to remain focused on a long-term organizational strategy.

Optimizing operational efficiency

The drivers influencing customer-purchasing patterns are dramatically different than they were just a few years ago. Due to higher customer expectations, supply chains are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of change, particularly around quick commerce considerations. With mountains of data and access to the latest solutions, the key is knowing how to use these tools effectively.

Supply chain optimization is especially crucial to successful retail inventory planning. With current disruptions from global conflicts, cost-management challenges, and a lack of visibility over consignment, retailers need support to make informed decisions for their inventory. Retail giants Robinsons and MAP shared the technologies they’re deploying, including cameras and sensors or heat maps, to facilitate more effective store planning that stocks the products customers want.

Another major theme was the importance of maintaining clean, usable data, since clean data can be mined for business and customer insights. Ken Feyder, head of Americas IT at Hermès, underscored that business intelligence and analytics are only as valuable as the data they track. Every customer touch point is an opportunity to generate rich data insights that drive operational excellence.

Jennifer Child, CEO at Oroton, highlighted how operational efficiency also enhances in-store experiences. For example, using RFID technology for inventory management ensures better visibility and real-time, in-store stock updates. In turn, this leads to better click-and-collect customer experiences.

Helping retail businesses thrive with AWS

At the AWS booth co-located with valued industry partner SAP, specialists showcased how retailers can deliver exceptional shopping experiences using AWS technologies. These solutions include Amazon Bedrock for building generative AI capabilities; Amazon OpenSearch Service for real-time application monitoring; Amazon SageMaker to deploy and train machine-learning models; and Amazon Interactive Video Service to create engaging livestream and interactive video experiences.

AWS APAC Retail Tech Leader Joshua Nathanielsz noted the countless opportunities for at-scale personalization along the customer journey, explaining how generative AI can tailor content and advertising according to individual customer preferences.

AWS also helps retail businesses maximize operational efficiencies. Syed Atif Umar, chief data and analytics officer at Nykaa, guided us through Nykaa’s generative AI–based catalogue, which the company built with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker. By replacing time-consuming manual processes with automation, it has significantly improved efficiency and scalability—while slashing costs and eliminating human errors and inconsistencies.

The AWS partnership with SmartOSC demonstrated how collaboration helps businesses deliver cutting-edge solutions to their retail clients. The in-booth presentation showcased the transformational journey of a global leading footwear and apparel brand, with SmartOSC deploying Amazon Bedrock to build a highly specialized chatbot. SmartOSC is now developing use cases across diverse retail businesses.

Understanding 2024: The year of the empowered customer

The conference wrapped with an economic outlook for APAC retail, which explored evolving consumer-spending trends in Asia Pacific, now and into the future. Comparing the past few years to bungee jumping, Mastercard’s Chief Economist David Mann expressed cautious optimism about the ongoing post-pandemic rebound. While rising costs of living continue dominating deadlines, the softening of inflation—and, in some APAC countries, expected interest-rate cuts this year—should help ease pressure on household budgets, with subsequent effects on retail sales.

The Asia-Pacific region will still be of focus in 2024, with China as one of the largest contributors to the global economy, and India as well. India’s anticipated scale of outbound travel, boom in its middle and upper-middle classes, and substantial gains in working-age populations will make it a major economic player in the years to come.

All in all, the first NRF APAC was an incredible success. It offered several opportunities to connect with industry leaders and peers interested in APAC’s exciting growth ahead, while featuring new ideas and technological innovations.

Learn more about how AWS can help grow your retail business.