Retail and consumer product brand image is increasingly established on social media. But beyond that, social networks, blogs, and price comparison web sites can all be used to attract and influence customers, to study demand patterns, and to support customers after their purchases. What immediate opportunities are available to retailers, and how about the long-term vision for social commerce?

In March 2010 IDC Retail Insights EMEA analysts had the opportunity to visit Accenture's Customer Innovation Center (CIC) in Milan. The Center works as a lab for assessing the value of innovative customer centric technologies - and their application to the retail, consumer products and telecommunication industries - as well as a hub for providing IT services to Accenture's clients in EMEA.

The profile of the modern consumer is rapidly evolving and eCommerce sales continue to grow in double digits. It is increasingly on social networks that consumers build their preferences of a given product or service; it is on social networks that consumers gather the necessary information to make purchasing decisions; and it is on social networks that brand awareness is established and brand image is ultimately built.

Whether a formal strategy is in place or not, we find universal consensus by US and EU-based retailers around the opportunity to drive mobile consumer interaction.

Five major areas of focus are emerging:

Despite some fundamental changes in shopping patterns, our industry in the US always seems to hold its collective breath around the level of shopper activity the day after Thanksgiving (the media over hyped Black Friday) as a harbinger of the health of the holiday season.  For obvious reason, this year's Black Friday took on even more urgency and, despite schizophrenic consumer confidence numbers and high unemployment, the early reporting is encouraging.  Don't believe for a minute, however, that this is a return to business as usual.

Advocating Immersive Shopping Experience (ISE) capabilities represent now a fundamental industry milestone for those retailers that want to differentiate the customer experience. Which technologies can enable consumers with an immersive shopping experience that can build loyalty and valuable, more profitable consumer relationships?

The implementation of self-scanning technologies by leading retailers continues to grow - especially in the food segment. We have seen many PRs and announcements; we have had discussions with some of the major self-scanning systems vendors; we have assessed retailers' investments plans on self-service technologies through demand-side research and in-depth conversations with merchants. Our biggest question at this stage was: how are consumers reacting to self-scanning?