The retail technology week in numbers

$11 billion….Walmart invested over $11 billion in technology last year, the retailer revealed at NRF 2019.

£328.2 million…Boohoo reports that like-for-like revenues rose 44% to £328.2 million in the four months to 31st December. In the UK, they jumped 33% to £180 million, whilst US sales were up 78% to £70.4 million.

£25 billion…Shoppers are planning to spend £25 billion via their smartphones this year, a £10 billion rise on 2018, according to research from Uswitch.

$150,000…Alibaba has partnered with FinTech firm Kabbage to provide US buyers up to $150,000 of financing at the PoS on Alibaba.com as part of a new programme called Pay Later.

7…Microsoft and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) have announced a seven-year partnership.

This will see the former become WBA’s strategic cloud provider, with plans to migrate the majority of the company’s IT infrastructure onto Microsoft Azure. It is also aiming to roll-out Microsoft 365 to more than 380,000 employees and stores globally.

300 million…JD.com has teamed up with Paramount Pictures and Hasbro to promote the Chinese release of the new Transformers movie, Bumblebee. This has included a sales event, during which more than 300 million customers were able to purchase merchandise from the likes of Hasbro, Panasonic and HLA. JD also outfitted multiple delivery vans and delivery boxes across China with Bumblebee-themed designs.

95% of consumers do not want to speak with robots while shopping in-store or online, according to a new study conducted by Oracle NetSuite in partnership with Wakefield Research and The Retail Doctor.

57%…PrettyLittleThing reports an increase in online engagement, customers’ time to next purchase (+57%) and an improved marketing engagement rate (+44%) after implementing Narvar technology.

41% of UK shoppers say that availability of products is the biggest frustration of shopping in-store, according to REPL Group research.

78%…The need to fuse online and offline experiences and fulfil anytime-anywhere convenience has retail executives concerned about the maturity of their CX and supply chain capabilities, according to research from JDA Software.

78% of the C-level execs surveyed did not have a real-time view of inventory across channels, and half believed they did not have the right platforms and tools in place to support expanded fulfilment options. In addition, retailers still did not have a single source of truth for their data nor the human capital to derive insights, and 46% did not trust their data.