Comment: Have we come to the end of the road for in-store technology?

Travel, we are informed, broadens the mind, but sometimes it focuses it as well. Last week, this year’s NRF (National Retail Federation) bun fight in New York came and went and there was a lot to see during its brief tenure of the Javits Centre.

Leaving that to one side for a moment however, there was the little matter of the shops in the Big Apple.

Wandering up a chilly Broadway and down Fifth Avenue there was certainly no shortage of things to look at. But how much innovation or novelty was on show?

If there is one thing that has come of age over the last year in the city it has to be in-store high-res screens with moving images.

These were everywhere, from the beauty hall in Macy’s to the beautifully framed versions in the new Polo Ralph Lauren store on Fifth.

The point is however, in spite of the sheer profusion of the things in Macy’s (there were screens on every branded space in the beauty hall), there is not much that is new about this, it’s just that there were a lot more of them.

Whole Foods Market was toying with Apple Pay – there were signs across the shop, but nobody seemed inclined to get out their iPhone 6 to avail themselves of the service.

As for the anything else, it looked like business as traditional.

All of which does not mean that technology is receding and that the folks in the Javits were wasting their time.

It’s just that customer-facing technology in the stores seems to have either been in retreat (multiple screens notwithstanding) or to be absent.

Does this mean that we’ve come to the end of the road as far as in-store tech is concerned and what are the likely results for shoppers if this is the case?

To judge by the crowds at the Javits, the answer to the first is no. And for shoppers it probably means new stores in 2015 will be teched-up to the iBeacons hidden behind the perimeter panels, but that little of what is being done will be obvious to the shopper.

It’s been a long while since the first in-store touch-screens made an appearance. Yet as we move beyond the mid-point of the 21st century’s second decade, it seems that retailers may be opting to use technology to make shopping easier, instead of as a means of entertainment (high-res screens notwithstanding once again). Back to the future?