Center for Advancing Retail & Technology and National Grocers Association create unique platform to help retailers and brands keep pace with rapid technology innovation
Arlington, VA, 2014-9-12— /EPR Retail News/ — The Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART) and the National Grocers Association (NGA) today announced a new online platform for the supermarket industry. The CART marketplace advancingretail.org is designed to help the supermarket sector keep pace with technology innovation that is rapidly transforming the way people shop.
“Retailers and brand manufacturers are experiencing information overload as they seek to stay informed of the rapidly growing number of innovative solutions coming into the market. CART’s platform is designed to help retailers and brands discover, evaluate, and engage new technologies. There is nothing else like it available in the retail industry today,” says Gary Hawkins, CEO of CART.
The marketplace is a free resource for retailers, providing a place to discover new solutions, to learn from available white papers and case studies, and obtain guidance in the form of ratings and reviews provided by fellow retailers. Additionally, solution providers are able to benefit from efficient access to the sizable supermarket industry, particularly the thousands of stores encompassing the independent and mid-market sector. Solution providers can also avail themselves of guidance provided by the CART team who have extensive retail and technology innovation experience.
In addition to serving retailers and solution providers, CART provides research services to consumer goods brand manufacturers. Operating retail stores participating in CART’s network serve as ‘live learning labs’ where CPG brands can test in-store merchandising innovation along with piloting new shopper-facing technologies. ‘Live learning lab’ environments are designed to provide deep insight to real shopper behavior using the latest research tools, including mobile analytics.
Understanding the importance of access to technology and innovation to independent retailers, CART has established a relationship with National Grocers Association. NGA is the preeminent trade association focused on serving the independent supermarket sector. CART powers up the NGA SolutionCenter (available solutions), ResourceCenter (case studies, articles, etc.), and the InnovationCenter (new innovations coming into the retail industry).
“Given the importance of technology to retail we are excited to help bring the new CART marketplace to independent grocers, and provide our members with resources and information on how to integrate the latest technology techniques into their business strategies,” said Peter J. Larkin, President and CEO of NGA.
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