11 Ways Technology Is Changing Holiday Shopping

Time with family and friends, festive decorations, decadent meals and good cheer might still make for a merry holiday season. But the increasingly digitized and pixelated celebrations of today seem like a far cry from scenes of yesteryear. The Internet, smartphones, social networking services and other innovations are putting high-tech twists on a whole range of holiday traditions.

Take a look below at a list of 11 ways technology is changing the holidays.

iBeacons are miniature BlueTooth devices that send unique signals to anyone who has downloaded a store’s mobile app. Earlier this year, MasterCard used beacons as part of a scavenger hunt at Brooklyn’s annual Northside Festival. This holiday season, iBeacons promise to transform the shopping experience: guiding customers to specific stores, products, and promotions–as well as allowing retailers to create custom campaigns. Most amazing of all is the iBeacon’s incredible accuracy: They’re not just able to direct customers to a certain store but to a particular spot on a shelf.

Adding a new twist to the phrase “window shopper,” New Zealand-based clothing retailer AS Colour recently launched a high-tech virtual stylist operating just outside its store. If a customer stands in front of a Smart Window and enters a bit of information — such as their gender — the technology analyzes their outfit and rates their choice of color and color combinations. Then it suggests new items that would suit them. “It’s about promoting engagement,” says McLaughlin. “This technology gives customers a way of engaging with merchants — and vice versa. It’s all about creating a more rewarding experience.” Customers are taking to the technology: Sales have risen 16 percent since the campaign started.

Stores have had their own apps for years, but now they’re becoming far more efficient and customer-friendly. If you’d rather not waste valuable shopping time waiting in line for lunch, Panera Bread’s app, for instance, lets customers sidestep the process. “Panera Bread’s app,” says MasterCard’s McLaughlin, “means that I can put in my complex sandwich order, pay for it, and then by the time I get to the store, there’s no waiting. I just pick up my food and go.”

Moving the mirror way beyond simple reflection, Burberry’s luxury stores feature mirrors which double as video screens. When a shopper picks up a selected item of clothing, an attached radio frequency chip triggers the screen to play exclusive content relating to that product; you might see information about how the sweater was made or a clip of the sweater as seen on a fashion runway. Still other retailers use augmented reality to show you what you would look like wearing the latest must-have item.

The next generation of in-store touch screens has arrived. Customers can use them to do everything from checking how many units of a particular item remain available (two left, better act fast!), to answering specific questions about sizing (a medium is fine, thank you), to selecting preferred features (buttons vs. zippers), and carrying out product customization (“I’ll take it in turquoise!”).

The pants don’t fit? Instead of getting dressed, gathering your belongings, and heading back to the rack, at the Seattle-based Hointer Beta Store, you can tap on your mobile phone or in-store tablet, and a personal assistant robot shopper will deliver the new item to a designated dressing room within 30 seconds.

With the rise of digital wallets and mobile payment apps reducing the time and effort it takes to make a purchase, it’s not surprising that nearly 60% of American consumers expect that they will use some form of digital wallet or mobile payment apps to purchase gifts this holiday season. In fact, nearly 1-in-3 expect to use these technologies more this holiday season than they did last holiday season.

Again, this shift holds true beyond digitally native generations, with 57% of Gen X and 51% of Baby Boomers saying that they expect to use digital wallets or mobile payment apps this holiday season. Even further, 26% of Gen X and 27% of Baby Boomers report that they expect to use digital payments more this holiday season than last.

The U.S. Postal Service expects greeting cards and letters to drop from 3 billion to 2.9 billion between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Christian Science Monitor reports. But the writer, Francine Kiefer, said she’ll likely include a real letter inside only half of the cards she sends out.

Still, she said, although Facebook offers constant connection, it doesn’t constitute significant correspondence. “Facebook skates over, it doesn’t dive deep. It’s crumbs, not a thick slice of Christmas stolen,” she said. “Hmmm. Go deep. My friends and family might like that. Historians will, too.”

Holiday shopping is hardly anything new, but thanks to technology, it’s easier than ever (some might even say, too easy) to find gifts you want at a competitive price. ShopSavvy, for example, is a free application for the iPhone and Android phones that uses a phone’s camera to scan and read product barcodes to automatically compare prices among tens of thousands of online and brick-and-mortar retailers. It tells you where to buy the product and even provides reviews and directions to the store’s location.

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