ZMD hands out its 8th retail tech awards, where should a small retailer start?

Six projects entered Best Technology Solution and 13 entered Best Technology Application in Retail. The heavier field on the application side stands out. Retailers who use technology in their stores outnumber the firms that sell it.

An 11-member jury pre-screened all applications. Shortlisted projects were then presented to the jury in a meeting. The report does not name the jury members, and it gives no results figures for the winning projects.

According to Perakende.org, the awards aim to support technology use, efficiency and innovative practice in retail. The association used to be called KMD, the Category Retailers Association, and announced its new name in April 2021. Its technology events go back further: in 2019, as KMD, it held its 6th Retail Technology Conference and awards.

In scale, no. In direction, yes. Watsons Türkiye has announced its 500th store, at Galataport Istanbul, and you do not need to rebuild its AI project in one shop. The idea of reading customer reviews systematically, though, works in a two-person boutique too.

Start with the problem closest to the till. If customers walk out because the card will not go through, fix payment first. If nobody drops in because your rating is low, fix reviews first.

No. The report gives no figures on efficiency, sales or cost impact. So it makes more sense to read the awards as a signal of where the sector is looking, not as a measure of success.

Chains in categories where reviews shape the purchase, such as cosmetics, personal care and sports, are best placed to benefit. If shoppers read product reviews before they decide, a chain that manages reviews consistently is in a better position to lift its average basket size.

Independent cosmetics shops, boutiques and single-branch sports stores selling in the same categories. When reviews go unanswered, the product just sits on the shelf, and the customer does the comparing on the chain’s page instead.

Service businesses such as cafés, restaurants and hair salons. The awards are not about them, but they raise what customers expect. A customer used to contactless payment and answered reviews wants the same from the café on the corner.

It means tracking your in-store card terminal, your website’s virtual POS and your marketplace payouts from one place. When the till does not balance at the end of the day, the cause is often that these three channels are tracked separately.

Ask for the commission rate, the settlement time and the refund process in writing. Ask whether in-store and online payments appear in the same dashboard. Rates vary by provider, so get your own quote; this is not legal or financial advice.

Because it shows what sells, at what hour and on which card. That makes it the cheapest way to set campaign times and decide which SKUs, or stock-keeping units, deserve the best shelf. When the till is quiet, the reason is often visible in that report.

Sorting hundreds of reviews into topics. Recurring complaints such as “I waited at the till” or “my size was out of stock” become visible in minutes. The report gives few details of how the Watsons project works, and Watsons Türkiye’s corporate news page shows the store count it operates at.

The feature customers praise goes into your ad copy, and the issue they complain about goes into the product description. On a marketplace, the reviews of a product with a low conversion rate show whether the problem is price or expectation.

Put your card terminal, virtual POS and marketplace reports into one spreadsheet and record a week of losses. If you plan to talk to a new payment provider, that sheet is the strongest document you can bring to the table.

Read your last 30 reviews and write down the three complaints that keep coming back. Reply to each with a short, signed answer. If you want to bring technology into the in-store experience instead, the experience zone Toshiba is taking around Istanbul malls offers a different example.

Technology changes the shelf through production and supply too, not only at the till. ETİ starting to make TRUBAR bars in Türkiye is one example of how that reaches the shelf. Our retail page, where we interpret retail news for you, keeps these threads together.

The report does not give entry conditions. The awards come from an association that represents chain stores, so check the conditions directly with ZMD.

First, log one week of lost payments. If there are no losses, you may not need new investment; if there are, the log shows which step you need.

No. Reading and replying to a small number of reviews by hand is a good start. As review numbers grow, tools that group reviews by topic save time.