This is an exciting week for us car junkies as the North American International Auto Show kicks off in Detroit. I love the dazzling array of concept cars, future technologies and the ability to see the entire offer of the industry, from the lowliest, cost-conscious commuter to the mind blowing, lotto dreaming, luxury exotics. From all accounts coming out of Detroit, this could be the year that the auto incorporates the app. Just what everyone needs, a 200 MPH smart phone. This new union makes me wonder if the future of the smart phone as we currently know it might be influenced by something the auto industry shares with many categories: the idea of luxury.

I was at a recent client meeting and noticed that nearly every executive at the table placed their phones on the table in front of them during the meeting. Some would check an email on occasion, some took calls. But one thing was consistent—most of them were the iPhone 4. As it turns out, the CEO of the organization had the same phone as my 16 year-old son, the white iPhone 4. My best guess is that he didn’t drive the same car as my kid, an orange Jeep Wrangler. I’d wager there to be something German and much more expensive in his space outside the building. Certainly, my kid and this CEO come from different planets when it comes to pay scale, the CEO can most likely afford anything he might choose. My kid gets an allowance, one I’m told that necessitates multiple weeks to save for a new XBox game, let alone a BMW 7 Series. But, they share the very same phone, as do many of us. So why isn’t there a luxury player in the phone category?

Picture a ballet — a symbiotic dance between many moving parts with thoughtfully choreographed transitions from one touchpoint to the next — and you’ll have an idea what a successful omnichannel experience should be like.

For retailers using a digital toolset, a great omnichannel experience would be the smooth hand-off of the shopper from one phase of their journey to the next, without losing their interest or loyalty. Ideally, they’d be momentarily engaged at one touchpoint, then propelled to the next until ultimately they make a purchase. At which point the retailer is able to serve the shopper post-sale.

The danger is that at any given time along this journey, shoppers can be lured away from your brand by the bright shiny objects put out there by competitors promising bigger discounts, more rewards or a better user experience.

As we always say, the process of channel optimization starts with a good strategy. Time spent creating a great brand strategy will ensure each touchpoint is designed and implemented to do the best it possibly can to influence shoppers along this journey in a smooth and engaging way, reducing the power of your competitors to dissuade them.

The contemporary shopper is looking for a volume knob when it comes to full service versus self-serve shopping. This is a fertile area of opportunity for retailers looking to upsell or reduce abandoned carts and baskets.

Thanks to today’s digital tools, brands have the opportunity to provide a range of customer service, from highly interactive selling to a quick simple checkout — even devoid of paper receipt. There’s a persuasive argument for exploring the way your company handles transactions. Imagine there was a sales associate in the wine section of your grocer. He or she could act as a sommelier and help you plan your dinner party, by walking you through wine and food pairings (and upsells)— with the aid of a digital device. Or, the shopper could decline the help and simply grab their usual table wine. There’s no pressure to interact if you don’t want to.

There has been some resistance on the part of retailers against allowing independent digital research and market-wide price comparisons into their spaces, online or instore. But for products at the higher price points, there’s a greater need for consumers to inform themselves of the options. Don’t be afraid of it. Your customers have already researched cars, electronics, appliances and luxury items before they enter your store. While digital tools can’t replace human interaction, they can support the store associate with data. A great sales associate still has opportunity to close the sale if they understand the process.

When you ask an architect to envision the Store of the Future, their mind races with the opportunities of the clean sheet of paper, unlimited budgets and unlimited resources! The reality of the store of the future is altogether different.

The Great Recession has left us with smaller budgets, dwindling resources and consumers who shop less. And according to the 2007 Economic Census, there were 1,122,703 retail establishments in the United States and a total of 14.2 billion square feet of retail spaces. With such an abundance of existing shopping space, the question to solve is: How will the existing retail environment of today be transformed into the Store of the Future, enticing the shopper and energizing the store personnel to provide a greater return on investment for the retailer?

Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers an exciting platform for renovating retail space, when it is appropriately used by design, construction and executive teams. Building models are constructed from digital representations of parts and components used in construction, complete with quantities and physical properties of the materials used.

These information-rich models allow simulation of things like heating or cooling loads, or physical weight loads. They allow an owner to tap into a robust database of information for use in identifying maintenance needs or merchandising opportunities over the life cycle of a building. In the future, BIM will drive a shift in construction towards premanufacturing or panelization of building components, reducing construction time and waste to provide tighter and more accurate bids.

It’s a great time to be a consumer. We have more choices than ever and we wake up each morning to even more. Something tells me that the future, either near or far, will be no different. Endless choice, however, has become the Achilles’ heel of brick and motor retail.

Imagine if Amazon.com had a physical store carrying everything they had online. They would need a skyscraper to contain the stock, and they’d have to add a new floor every week or so, just to keep up. Some stores seem like they’ve actually tried this, and it hasn’t been working out so well. Border’s recent woes are a sign that their stores are just too big. They try to balance a merchandise mix that has the drawing power of new and urgent, yet satisfies a book-lover’s fondness for browsing and the rewarding sense of, “Hmmm, this looks interesting.”

But what percentage of that browsing space is effectively selling? I would wager the turn on some titles must be once a year, perhaps some less than that. Similarly, on a recent trip to Blockbuster I saw plenty of dusty niche titles that might never be rented again, if they ever had been. All taking up shelf space that wasn’t being productive. The store of the future has to change size and I think it has to be smaller.

A bit of a paradox, expanding choice and shrinking space to merchandise it.

The Store of the Future is there when my wife suggests one fine day (in a sweet and casual tone) that we should “update the floor tile in the bathroom.” It is there as I begin to visualize how the new bathroom will look. It is there when I have to pick out paint, fixtures, cabinets, countertops, shower doors and oh yeah, tile. More importantly, it is there long before I have to decide where to shop for these products for my now full-scale bathroom renovation.

The Store of the Future is a convergence of technology and possibility that materializes exactly when you need it.

Today we live in a world of consumer co-creation. Retailers can’t wait till the shopper hits the store to see what’s available. It is now all about being there at the moment the consumer realizes a need, and shepherding them along an adaptive path to the store, all while keeping the wolves from luring the them off into the forest of competing brands. Today, more than ever, retailers need to find creative ways to keep shoppers—even their brand loyalists—engaged all the way through the transactional process. That is the power and the risk of digital touchpoints in retailing.

If retailers are willing and able, they can invest in effective digitally-based methods for reaching further into the shopper’s path to purchase, closer to that decision point of “should I or shouldn’t I?” and influence the decision to buy. Keep in mind, however, that it’s the brand strategy behind the digital touchpoints that will drive more transactional traffic—not the digital tools themselves.

There’s a LOT of talk under our roof here at Interbrand about the digital aspects of retail branding. Many brands are busy developing or executing digital strategies, some a little further along than others. If you don’t have a strategy for how digital serves your brand, you need to start. Because it isn’t a fad and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. A recent experience illuminated a key differentiator in experience between the digital and the tangible: the mess.

A recent trip to a common mall brand illustrates why many of your customers would rather go online than come into the store. My shopping trip yielded a table of jeans that looked like someone had slept in the middle of them. Sizes everywhere. This wash here, that wash there. Little if any organization around style and fit, the two things I need to select a purchase. Not simple. Definitely not clean. A complete and absolute mess. The product, not necessarily inexpensive, certainly wasn’t being treated well and in a manner which would actually help me buy it. If anything, it was a huge turnoff and the haphazard display made it frustrating to shop. (You don’t want your store looking like my kid’s bedroom. It isn’t pretty.) It may not have been the company’s intent to drive people out of the store to their website, but that was the outcome.

When I log onto a retail site, the cheerful models peer back at me and give me a bit of the vibe of what to expect from the brand. If I need a size, no problem, I click to see if they have what I need in stock. A simple, clean, no-mess experience. Product looks great on or off a model. No stock, no problem, I know quickly and can move on. This isn’t to say that the digital realm is mess-proof. Certainly, all web experiences are not created equal and some end up being hard to use.

Even while a company may be lax tidying up after the chaos we shoppers leave in our wake, the tangible world still has its advantages. Try as they might, online experience can’t let me feel something.

The idea that you can put all your eggs into one digital basket and expect explosive growth is a myth. That kind of thinking was debunked back in the dotcom days when companies were stung by “vaporware”—hardware or software that promised unrealizable results and of course required a great big financial commitment.

Today we know better. Or do we? I’ve noted more than a few companies compelled to chase technological fads for fear of being left behind. In the rush to catch up, they invest in what seems like “the next big thing” on very little proof of the business case for it. The end result is often wasted budgets, dark screens and agitated customers.

Incrementalism, on the other hand, is a wiser way to spend the company’s hard-earned money and has a much better chance of keeping the customer from abandoning the path to purchase that drives them to your store. The incremental approach is a method of working towards your digital goal using many small—often less planned—changes instead of a few extensively planned jumps.

It requires a sound guiding strategy, one that can be implemented across all your channels in phases, and then tested. Incrementalism gets you there faster because it requires less planning, but you’ve then got to test the daylights out your digital improvements to see where additional changes can yield even better results.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble of retail news this month. Truth is, Black Friday is tangible and truly “urgency” based, whereas Cyber Monday may be more myth than reality. I haven’t seen people lining up in the hallway to use my computer to get an e-deal at the crack of noon.

The whole notion of Cyber Monday is doomed because of mobile devices as well as shoppers’ new perspective on holiday urgency. In brick-and-mortar retail, deals (or the excitement of discovering a deal) are actually capable of being newsworthy. By contrast, online deals are the rule not the exception.

Shopping and buying on the Web or with a smartphone is not about shopping on the retailer’s terms, but about shopping on your terms. The result is a steady stream of sales because we all have our own schedules and unique habits and obligations.

The Black Friday idea assumes shoppers will remain willing to have mass experiences with the high risk of wasted time due to slim inventories. Because of this inherent “fragmented urgency” versus “mass urgency,” winning in e-retail is about creating site loyalty via one-click relationships and providing enhanced accessibility anywhere through mobile apps.

Every year the winter holiday decorations seem to appear even earlier than the year before. The Christmas trees at the mall, the lights on people’s homes, the holiday banners on city streets—all arrive before we’ve had a chance to eat our Halloween candy.

Retailers recognize our growing desire to get a jump on the buying (or at least the researching) of holiday gift lists, as well as the wish to stay at home on a comfy couch and browse online—versus fighting the crowds and lining up in the cold to get one of a limited number of door buster deals. In response, they offered online deals prior to Black Friday.

It paid off. Online spending increased 33% on Thanksgiving Day this year, and the average online spend over the course of the following weekend saw a 16% spike. And with these deals available, along with the added convenience of product reviews, price comparisons, larger inventories, and in many cases free shipping, it’s no wonder more and more shoppers are choosing the ease of online shopping. The so-called Cyber Monday is actually a Cyber Season.

While I am certainly one of those early online shoppers hoping to find a deal before I’m forced to wade through the masses at my local mall, I am a little dismayed by the ever-earlier beginning of holiday season. Maybe the urge is less acquisitive and more wishful than it appears

Our creative team is often asked about the efficacy of kiosks in stores, and I have come to the conclusion that the mighty kiosk has had it’s day in the sun. Once upon a time, kiosks served a purpose. They were the first baby steps of digital media in the store. Over time, the screens that once held so much promise eventually went blank. Content wasn’t updated with any frequency. The constant repetition enticed employees to turn the volume down or even worse, turn the screens off. They broke down. The intentions were good, but the executions suffered.

Then something unforeseen happened. Customers started bringing his own kiosks with them.

So let’s talk about my kid for a minute.

Like many other 15-year-old boys, he likes his video games. When he was a bit younger, games sold for $15 to $20. If we bought one that didn’t suit him, it wasn’t the end of the world. Now, however, his games are much more sophisticated and expensive, some upwards of $70. Now when a game doesn’t match up to his standard of play, he’s not so forgiving.

So, he takes a different approach. While cruising the game aisle at the mass stores or Best Buy, he asks the advice of hundreds of people he has never met using technology that he brings with him, his iPhone. He launches an app aligned with his type of gameplay that lets him access hundreds of reviews on virtually any title, instantly. If the title isn’t awarded a certain number of stars, he passes it up. He is leveraging his own kiosk to get exactly what he needs to make the decision to buy. So why would he use yours?

 I love going to a store, shopping the aisles, finding a product on the shelf and then speeding home to play with it. If it’s really fun purchase, I may have it ripped out of its packaging before I even make it home. Texting while driving isn’t a problem for me, as much as getting behind the wheel with a new goodie in hand.

Now you may think that since I’m a digital retail technologist within a brand consulting firm that specializes in the creation of retail experiences, I’d be singing the praises of mobile shopping to the exclusion of the instore experience. I am not.

The physical store is still the most important and highly utilized part of a multi-channel approach to securing a transaction. Retailers derive as much as 80 percent of their transactional business from the sales floor. Most shoppers research online but still buy the item from the store. This is not going to change overnight.

Therefore, for now, and for a few years more, we need to devote energy and resources to the creation of an all-encompassing brand strategy that will connect and align our brand touchpoints, both virtual and physical, knowing the vast majority of connections still happen instore while being smart about upgrading our technology.

Supermarket shopping list apps for your mobile device and online services like Alice.com for home essentials are just the beginning. I envision the day when the shopper walks into the store, pulls up their list on an in-store kiosk, validates its accuracy, accepts any coupons and places the order. The order is paid for with automatic bill pay. While the order is being filled, the customers has time to shop for something new, and enjoy the kind of experience that makes going to the store an event.

While such automated fulfillment processes are being tested today, no one has yet leveraged the process to drive loyalty and productivity by taking the drudgery our of replenishment shopping to such an extreme and adding some magic to the instore experience.

Imagine a day when replenishment is completely automated. Retailers would not need aisles and aisles of competing brands of toilet paper fighting for shelf space, costing manufacturers and retailers millions to merchandise.

What if we provided household staples in ecological “white” packaging for pickup on our way out of the store? We could effectively eliminate the chore of rattling our carts up and down the aisles pushing 100 pounds of cleaning and paper products. Companies could save the budget spent on design and packaging and apply it to affiliate marketing and/or advertising efforts on the digital shopping lists.

Recently an innovative outdoor apparel brand I admire, Cloudveil, was purchased by a group of private equity investors. The group snatched the brand from the jaws of certain bankruptcy with an eye on turning it back into a successful driver of innovation in the outdoor apparel market. On the surface Cloudveil as a brand seemed to be on top of the world, but the fog of creative financing and fast-paced expansion hung over their head and obscured the brand’s future success.

After pulling the entire online catalog from their Internet presence, the new owners did what any self-respecting brand does to improve their brand awareness, they started a blog! That will fix everything right? Social media and Web 2.0 to the rescue!

No doubt there was a marketing meeting where someone said something to effect of, “Let’s tap into the passion of our customer base, the hardcore cult following.” The problem, of course, is that in changing hands they closed their flagship store in Jackson Hole and alienated most of the cult following.

What followed was a blood bath series of comments on their blog that will live in perpetuity every time someone types Cloudveil into their favorite search engine. Welcome to your new digital permanent record. OUCH!

Using digital media in retail really isn’t a new concept, the idea has been around for years. Recently though, “going digital” has gotten a lot easier, cheaper and more meaningful to both companies and customers. It’s easy to caught up in the new digital revolution and want to implement this “cool factor” into your brands retail experience in every possible way, however, be smart about it.

The next time you’re in Best Buy, stand in front of the TV department and look at all those screens. Hard to focus, isn’t it. Now imagine those same screens each playing different content and messages simultaneously. My brain shuts down just thinking about that! The point here is that when it comes to integrating digital signage or interactivity into your retail experience, don’t overdo it.

The focus is always about your brand, not how digital you are.
The best way to approach any digital integration in retail is as an enhancing element, not a distracting one. Consumers are already bombarded with messages from different angles. You can inadvertantly add too much digital content and end up with “noise” when you are merely trying to help with a purchase decision.

The central question here is: how much digital is too much? While digital is appropriate for many aspects of the shopping journey, there are moments when it isn’t. Also, and to my earlier point, too much digital content can become very overwhelming and even detract from the real focus of the experience (your brand, services and products).

Confession time: I find myself fascinated by the recent trend of social shopping websites, in particular Gilt Groupe, an “invitation only” online retailer that offers daily sales on limited quantities of high end fashion items at deeply discounted prices.

When the clock strikes noon, shoppers can put an item in their carts (if they are lucky enough to get it before selling out—a common occurrence by 12:05PM). Once in the cart, the item is reserved for 10 minutes. If the item is not purchased within that time frame, it goes back into the general market to be snatched up by a more determined buyer.

There is no time for “do I really need this?” contemplation—the goal first and foremost is to get the item in the cart, hoping that the 10 minute hold time is enough to make an informed decision. Gilt even encourages multiple transactions by waiving the shipping charge for additional items purchased within the hour.

I have gotten caught up in the hype. I’d like to think that knowing what levers a retailer is pulling to get me to buy (scarcity, immediacy, peer pressure, etc.) makes me savvier and therefore less inclined to make an impulse purchase. But in this case evidence has not borne that out.

Though I do not own one, my feelings toward the iPad are bordering on covetousness. And while there are myriad uses for an iPad, I primarily want one to replace the 6 short boxes of comics that I have in storage.

I’ve recently been testing out a few comic book apps from the app store. My favorite, as far as user experience goes, is the PanelFly app. Lately, however, I find myself primarily using the Marvel Comics app because of the titles available and ease of access to the free downloads section. I think comics are perfect for this new form factor. The size is right. The colors are vivid. The potential for enhanced content is through the roof.

Also, the target demographic is primarily older adult males, the kind of consumer that generally has no problem rationalizing half a grand or more for a slab of sexy tech ware.

However, many comic retailers are already gathering their pitchforks and torches and assembling at the village square to put an end to this perceived strange, new threat.

Their main argument against the iPad and comic apps? “Why should customers come to my store to purchase their funny books on dying trees when they can have it zipped to their iPad in seconds?”

This question has gained increased urgency since publishers have recently been testing same-day digital and print releases.

My answer to this perplexing question is: Yes, why should they?

CNN.com recently ran an article in their tech section on this very subject. They quoted publishers and retailers and while everyone is quick to praise the iPad experience, they fail to mention what is fundamentally wrong with the retail experience that has driven customers away in the first place.

While our annual 2010 State of the Retail Industry report delineates the challenge for retail brought about by consumer behavior changes in reaction to the great recession and the rapid adaption of mobile technology—many of those challenges will take several years to address. To find seven things that retailers can do right now, we asked our experts.

Scott Jeffrey, Chief Creative Officer

Push for differentiation. There is no time to rest on your laurels. Realize that innovation isn’t a stage, it’s an ingrained brand behavior. In fact, stop thinking of innovation as a “next step” all together–”step” as in a phase of something that stops and starts, or merely cycles through.

My ideal retail brand would be one that never completes a store design prototype. The “never done” mentality is always asking, “What else? What else can we do to make it better?” That type of thinking requires courage. Belief in the importance of change. Granted, not every one of your new ideas will be a game changer, but once you entertain doubt and back off, you pretty much lose momentum. Particularly now, when the customer expectations are so far ahead of what most retailers are delivering in terms of the brand experience.

The minute you rest on your laurels and let your brand and your stores get outdated, you have a really big, hardest-to-do maneuver on your hands: a turnaround. If you have a fleet of any size, you’re in danger of being too big and too rigid to manage a turnaround. But if you’re a constant seeker, a brand that remains loose and nimble, the maneuvers are much smaller and easier to manage. Your creative adjustments and transitions will be happening all the time. Knock down any silos in your way and get to that mindset as soon as you can.

Bill Chidley, Senior Vice President, Shopper Sciences

Consumers’ rapid adoption of the smartphone means it’s time to start thinking about connecting and communicating through that little screen. To make the most of the opportunity to drive demand, mobile optimization should be a top priority for your brand. It’s all about being in the game. Don’t try to justify mobile initiatives with ROI. Move forward with a reasonable hypothesis and prepare to learn and adapt.

Don Rethman, Senior Vice President, Architecture

Consider doing a site survey. Do your shoppers expect to share their shopping experience instantly? Do you plan to make fast calls to action in the store? Your building needs a wireless-based backbone to support that, with wireless connectivity that allows for transitions. This goes even beyond the creation of mobile hot-spots. Buildings must have a distributed, robust and flexible IT infrastructure which will allow technical access to all spaces. It helps if you’re working with architects who are aware there is such a thing as a path to purchase so they can help create a store that increases productivity and doesn’t skimp on the brand experience.

Amanda Yates, Vice President, Strategy & Analytics

It’s vital to map the “customer journey” to understand where best to make the wireless investments, as well as other investments that help your brand drive choice. Mapping will provide the insights that will help you gain advantage and protect sales by offering shoppers what they want in the modes they desire. Not every retailer will need a full-blown program, but each must understand the needs of its customers, what information and access they are looking for and where or how they want to access it. Once these insights are known, the appropriate level of investment and how to spend it will become much clearer.

Dave Nixon, Executive Director, Digital Strategy

The multi-channel ideal is a seamless transition from the physical shopping experience to the virtual experience through every digital touchpoint–one that’s painless for the shopper and profitable for the retailer. However, for most retailers that’s not the first thing you can do. There will be silos to take down, brand strategy work and brand engagement initiatives to adopt before that nirvana is reachable. I’d like to elucidate further on what Bill says (above)—“Get in the game.”

Companies that spend too much time planning their next technology steps will find themselves playing catch up to those that are already moving. One of the main benefits of digital is the ability to deploy it quickly and then modify or adapt the solution depending on the performance metrics for success. In that respect, adopting new digital platforms into your channel strategy is less expensive and presents less risk than physical channels. The time is now to leverage digital technologies for increasing revenue, efficiency and customer loyalty.

Kris Medford, Ph.D., Director of Shopper Sciences

Get to know your shoppers again. Segmentation that is a few years old is downright archaic so make sure your insights are recent and actionable. Who are your shoppers—both those in your store today and those you want in the future? What’s important to them from a digital perspective, and how can you use digital help to make your brand be more relevant to their lifestyle?

Justin Wartell, Senior Consultant, Brand Strategy

The physical store needs to evolve from its position as the “jewel in the crown” to a “tool in the arsenal.” For retailers, the most important thing that can be done right now is to (re)examine the relationship between the physical brand experience and all of the other expressions of the brand. Brand experiences are inter-connected organisms that create an overall customer feeling about the brand. By understanding the role that retail plays in the context of the other touchpoints that are, or can be, deployed, retailers can drive loyalty, reputation, efficiency and value across their organizations.

Curious. In a world where we can create our own unique looks by shopping anywhere we want, or by building our own virtual worlds, we still desire the approval of others and want resassurance that we fit in.

If you want to make sure you are being noticed by the right people, check out your recent witty status post on Facebook to see how many “Likes” you got from friends.

Wondering which outfit to wear tonight? Check with the masses via Go Try It On. Post photos of your look(s) and get fast feedback on which outfit makes you look cool and confident—most like the type of person who doesn’t need approval. There’s been a significant rise in the number of mobile instant fashion advice sites that play into this need.

It seems we are constantly looking for peoples’ opinions of where to shop or how we look. When it comes to apparel, of course, some of that need for approval stems from the fact that today’s fashion trends are very tricky to make work in a flattering way, especially for women. Seeking honest feedback can keep you from spending unwisely. So we are using technology to get advice quickly, right outside our closets, or often at the very point of purchase.

Digital business continues to grow as clients seek expertise in creating an ideal shopper journey online as well as offline

They say that having no presence on mobile devices in 2010 is like not having a website circa 1999. So true! The digital age is in hyper-drive. 3G access continues to increase, and 4G is already here! Some stats say that up to 99 percent of the population will have some sort of data capability on their mobile phones by 2011.

So what does this mean for retailers? It means the need for a whole new view to their digital strategies. When a shopper can enter a store, scan a barcode, see that the same product is cheaper at a nearby competitor and click a link for directions to take them straight there, the game has suddenly been changed, so to speak. There is an ever-expanding catalog of apps out there to enable this type of shopping behavior (in the store, in the car or on the run), and manufacturers like Apple are training customers via commercials and advertisements about how to use all these apps to simplify their lives.

It might be easy to dismiss this trend given the relatively small percentage of people with iPhones or Droids today, but now is the time to start investigating and investing in individual strategies.

Okay, I admit, I’m a technology laggard, but for the sake of “being in the know,” I have embraced the iPhone and downloaded those apps that I was told were “must haves.” So far The Weather Channel, Facebook, and Mah Jong have proven the most engaging. But here is one I’ve tried that I was told would revolutionize my grocery shopping…

GroceryGadget. In theory, this should be a great one. Create your shopping list, take photos of preferred brands (so when Dad shops he knows what to buy), tick off your items as you shop, and the list recreates itself in the order products are shopped for next time. Total winner right? Not so much.

Imagine pushing your cart down a crowded grocery aisle, baby in seat, purse hanging off shoulder (or shoved in baby’s lap), iPhone in purse (because let’s be real—holding a slippery, expensive piece of electronics while pushing a heavy cart whose wheels are probably not working properly just isn’t realistic), and scanning shelves.

I’ve been fascinated with the concepts of “augmented reality” as it is currently being used by Legos.

What’s so amazing is the ability to integrate a 3D digital element directly into a live video feed with complete real time interaction. I understand the automotive industry is jumping all over this technology with upcoming concept vehicles that can have on-screen (windshield) feed for enhancing road contours, signage, lighting, etc. —which could completely change the way we think of driving.

So with much fanfare, and at least as much controversy, Apple’s iPad has been released to the masses. Okay, I admit it, I ran out and bought one the day the 3G model was available and I also admit that I’m a bit smitten with it. I have no doubt that it will change my behavior in much the same way my iPhone did. But as much as the general public was anticipating the launch, I wonder if retail wasn’t equally as excited about it as part of the digital retail experience of the future.

From what I’ve seen so far, I can use it as a creative tool (no more losing my pen cap thanks to the sketch app). And I’ll be more efficient with my time away from home. I can imagine that, put to the right use, a device like this has the ability to bring a different set of efficiencies to retail.

Maybe the iPad and the inevitable wave of competitors will have the ability to transform my experience at checkout. Maybe checking in at a hotel will be easier.

Retailers looking for great examples of wirelessly connecting with their shoppers have three great brands to look to: American Eagle Outfitters, Netflix and Amazon.com. The continue to differentiate their shopping experiences with intimacy, responsiveness and relevance.

Even with millions of items for sale, Amazon connects intimately with customers, from its one-click ordering to its ability to become more relevant with each visit. The result is a “barrier to exit” that other brands envy.

American Eagle excels at aggressively integrating multi-channel marketing tactics into both its traditional and digital campaigns. It connects at all the right touchpoints, which goes a long way towards achieving brand loyalty. This year, AE included a mobile filed in its loyalty program, and used mobile as a point of entry into sweepstakes as well as an alerts program. Calls to action were posted on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter in the form of banner ads, status updates and tweets.

Should retail brands be concerned about their brand strategy or should they simply concentrate on sales per square foot? Are we on the verge of a new spirit of innovation in retail to serve “pent-up” demand? How can the virtual environment of digital retail create communities outside the four walls of the store?