John Bessant and Joe Tidd developed the 4Ps model of innovation; this model is built on the hypothesis that there must be a positive change associated with the innovation in order to be successful (Reinartz & Dellaert et al., 2011). Innovative change can take place in four categories in an organization: product, process, position and paradigm innovation. Within the last two years, there have been several changes in the retail industry. It is a large industry that covers long chain of processes where the behavior of the shoppers have high influence. The most significant change has been brought by the mobile technology that falls into the category of the process innovation. The smartphones play a significant role in making a good experience for the buyers. Square-app, a co-founder of Twitter has enabled a technology called the Card Case where the users would pay for their products easily by giving in their name along with their registered card number; the data and the picture of the buyer appears on the iPad of the retailer and a receipt is generated in the form of text message on the customer’s smartphone. Social media has raised awareness and also enhanced the relations between individuals; with this process innovation in the retail industry (Reinartz & Dellaert et al., 2011), not only our organization but all the competitors need to hurry and adopt this efficient system. This not only decreases the cost and saves time, but it also helps to retain data for the customer preferences and buying behavior can be easily analyzed. The innovation of the mobile technology has influenced the traditional business models; the entire industry is being shifting its paradigm as smartphone apps have wiped away the prior technologies. The physical retailers like Best Buy have to compete with online retailers plus those who are present both physically and through internet like Giant, Tesco, Wal-Mart, Asda and IKEA. The smartphone technology is a customer friendly innovation that has been specifically designed to enhance customer experience and ensure loyalty.
References
Reinartz, W., Dellaert, B., Krafft, M., Kumar, V. & Varadarajan, R. (2011). Retailing innovations in a globalizing retail market environment. Journal Of Retailing, 87 pp. 53--66.
