Half of the 350 retail CEOs around the world involved in a 2017 PwC survey have cited a digital strategy as their top priority for this year.
‘CEO Viewpoint 2017: the Transformation of Retail’, the fourth report prepared for JDA Software Group by PwC, also found that 69 per cent of the executives plan on increasing their investment in digital transformations this year.
“The investment in technologies underscoring digital transformation was a major undercurrent within this year’s survey results, which is no surprise, since retail CEOs understand just how important it is to invest in the technology that will improve the customer experience,” JDA Group Vice President Global Retail Strategy Lee Gill said.
Retailers are using digital technologies to better understand and connect with their customers, with the survey showing the top technologies pegged for investment were mobile-enabled applications (85 per cent), big data (86 per cent) and use of social media data (85 per cent).
PwC conducted the survey in late 2016 with 351 responses from executives in the US, Mexico, the UK, Germany, China and Japan.