Justin Racine, Principal of Unified Commerce Strategy, has written about some of the most gripping commerce and retail topics this year. In 2024, he’s decoded how Elon’s new Justin’s expertise and passion for cutting-edge technology transforming the commerce landscape brings great depth and nuance to his articles. In addition, his coverage of and poignant reflections on the conferences he attends sent his thought leadership to the top of featured article and must-read lists. Therefore, it is no surprise that Justin has been named CMSWire’s Contributor of the Year for the third year in a row.
We sat down with Justin before he jets off for his next conference – NRF 2025 – to get some much-needed answers to the most asked commerce and retail questions we’ve received at Perficient.
What are the growing trends that you see shaping the future of ecommerce, and how are you helping brands to stay competitive in those areas?
Our entire world is going to become “phygital.” In other words, physical and digital experiences will continue to blend into a perfectly crafted shopping journey that delights and surprises customers. While the concept of phygital will start to take shape in the form of augmented reality, product visualizers, and digital twins – it’s more likely that brands will first start with expanding their presence into new ecommerce channels, like social media.
According to eMarketer – social commerce revenue will pass $100B in 2025, a staggering 22% growth path from their last modeling in 2023. While some social channels’ futures are unknown, like TikTok – many other channels continue to surge. You’ll start to see the entrance of product placement and buying opportunities within YouTube – and eventually other streaming platforms like Netflix will start to adopt the ability to shop within your favorite shows.
Additionally, we’ll start to see large brands build out customer community efforts to compete with smaller, scrappier niche brands. Consumers are human beings, and human beings love to interact with others who share similar mindsets, values, and traits. The onset of these new digital communities will spawn enhanced elements of anthropomorphism between customer and brand, helping to create elevated levels of connection and ultimately, will drive increased ecommerce revenues.
What is the trajectory of AI’s impact on hyper-personalized customer experiences that brands should incorporate into an effective unified commerce strategy?
The world of hyper personalization will start to become more humanized as well as more predictive. Assisted shopping and autonomous shopping would then be the next logical step. This is where AI will start to intimately begin understanding your buying patterns, preferences, and previous decisions. It will start ordering products for you without a given prompt.
From there, AI will start to move into something akin to ‘empathetic personalization’ – where AI can start to understand sentiment, tone, and emotion. AI models will recommend products or services that are based upon how we feel or act within that specific day or environment.
Eventually, we all will have our own personalized shopping AI buddies who will help us with everything. They’ll assist in everything from scheduling the kids’ summer activities to buying and booking travel for spring break. AI personal assistants will become the future way to do anything and everything.
How about when you incorporate the advancements in connected products and robotics as digital and physical retail environments are beginning to blend (phygital)?
An example might be that you’re walking down the street, and you see a pair of shoes that you absolutely love. Thankfully you happen to be wearing your Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses that cue up a blended augmented view of the shoes, where you can see exactly where you can purchase them, and also what they would look like on your feet by simply looking down. That will be the future of retail.
Additionally we’re going to see retail become more connected and unified than ever before. Brands will invest to leverage a 360 view of customer activity to personalize across the channel continuum. Once in-store beacon technology starts to take off, retailers will be able to personalize the entire shopping experience based upon where a customer is standing in the store, what they previously browsed through on that store’s website, and what they previously purchased.
In previous blogs, we’ve covered conversational commerce and the anthropomorphism of brands. What strategies would you recommend for companies looking to humanize their approach without losing scale during peak shopping seasons?
Humanizing at scale really just comes down to understanding your consumer and knowing what type of humanized touchpoints will resonate the most. I talked a little about this above, but once all of us have our own personal shopping assistants, the world of commerce becomes much more centralized and unified.
Think of the times where you consciously recognized that you needed to go to the store to buy this or that. Now with personal shopping agents, they will be there to help build shopping lists, remind you of what you need to purchase, and at times, purchase without your intervention. Taking it a step further, AI will start to have visibility into elements like product stock status and availability – giving you options and nudging you to make a purchase so that you receive the products in time. For example, “Hi Justin, reminder, your calendar shows you have holiday party next Thursday. If you want to order your Santa costume and have it before then, please order today. Would you like me to place that order for you?” Thus, ensuring you get what you want, when you want it, and that’s the future that I foresee.
Remember, connectivity strategies are only as good as the channel in which you provide them. Be sure to understand what channels your customers are active in first, then determine which stories you want to tell – and always, ALWAYS do the best you can to track the results to offer up pivots and lessons learned.
How do you think shoppers will initially react to such cutting-edge technology transforming their shopping experience?
I’m interested to see how consumers react to the idea of AI technology knowing more about us than we know about ourselves. In my mind, it can go one of two ways. First, consumers could reject this idea and choose to push back against the onset of AI technology being so intimately tied to our every action, every move, and every purchase. Or alternatively and more likely in my mind, is that consumers will start to adopt AI technology willingly. They will become dependent on its insights, its understanding, and ultimately, its goal to give us the best possible cross-channel, unified experiences. Will we be as reliant on AI as we are on our smartphones? Most likely. Will AI become the dominant race on this planet and take over the world? Only time will tell.
Be on the lookout for Justin’s next article covering his attendance at NRF: Retail’s Big Show coming up in the beginning of January. We’ll have live coverage of the first few days of the conference, and if you’re planning on attending, be sure to schedule a meeting with him and the rest of our experts.
