NRF (National Retail Federation) is one of the largest retail conventions in the world, and since the North American version always happens in New York in early January, it’s a great way to get a preview of technology provider marketing strategies for the year ahead. This year was no different. Per usual I was armed with an expo pass and wandered the floor Sunday and Monday, catching up with partners and exploring new vendors that might be able to support our evolving service offering. Here are my five biggest takeaways from NRF 2025:
1. Biggest Buzz Word(s): Unified Customer Experience | Unified Commerce (powered by AI of course)
These two terms were visible throughout the show floor on the booths of massive hardware and software companies, consulting firms, and, of course, at the Amazon “building” as well. The retail marketplace is seeing ways to support customers who interact with retailers and brands depending upon a number of stimuli and personal preference. As we all know, one week a customer might go into a store of a brand, and the next, they might prefer to buy online. Or they mix it up if they need something on their schedule by buying online and purchasing in store. So, the solution providers, software providers, and hardware providers are all promising to be a key part of delivering the “Unified Customer Experience” within the context of “Unified Commerce.” The marketing promise by the vendor-at-large community is: We can help retailers provide the right experience to every customer, regardless of their channel, at the right and appropriate time.
2. Amazon (and others): a Single Source of Technology
Amazon led a number of retail merchant heavyweights that are promising to be the pathway to retailers that want to achieve the coveted “unified commerce” expertise and operational knowledge. The Amazon booth was the largest of all exhibitors, but they had an important differentiator – allowing visitors to walk through a test of a live demo of their Smart Store. In this store a consumer can walk in and walk out with a product and payment complete so long as their mobile purchasing software is turned on. Cool.
3. Hardware Vendors Selling end-to-end solutions
Lenovo had a compelling booth experience with a spacious walk-in demo store centered around consolidation of retail responsibilities using their system which allows retailers to “Enter a new era of secure and seamless shopping across online, in-app, and in-store channels. With Lenovo’s total Retail solution, you’ll stay ahead of the game.” While Lenovo has supplied retailers with hardware for years – like many exhibitors they were also offering their expertise and a stack of end-to-end services that support the overall theme of urgency for retailers: “Get to Unified Commerce Quickly Or Else!”
4. AI AI AI AI AI
Not surprisingly almost every exhibitor was verifying (versus claiming to have a proprietary view on) that their technology, practice, or product offering leverages maturing AI technology and that this technology gives them a competitive advantage. It made me think of 20 years ago when computer manufacturers needed to seem credible by claiming to have “Intel Inside.”
5. The Major eCommerce Platforms “Drop the “E” in eCommerce”
BigCommerce should take credit for talking about “Open Commerce” for years now, but since the purchasers of eCommerce technology are finally catching up in an AI-powered world, the overall theme of the platforms’ value proposition was similar: they offer a patch to consolidating areas of effort and enabling unified customer experiences regardless of retail channel. While Shopify is in a place to make this promise very quickly with retailers given its decades-long experience with POS, eCommerce integration BigCommerce (which owns Feedonomics) has an important claim to make as the enabler of retailers that need to succeed in an omnichannel economy leveraging marketplaces that are both physical and digital.
NRF 2025 exhibitors lived up to expectations providing the hype and the vision for retailers to chase – unified customer experiences. The 2010’s were all about multichannel marketing, the pandemic was about eCommerce, delivery, shipping and inventory supply. Now we are in the era of the unified customer experience – “Unified Commerce.” Here we go!
