12 June, 2018
The consumer industry is under constant pressure to keep pace with disruptive technologies; regulatory intervention and change; consumer preferences; and business model adaptations. in the below briefings, we tackle these issues highlighting the legal challenges and consequences with the aim to equip business leaders and their legal teams with the foresight to mitigate risks and take advantage of resultant opportunities.
1. The future of retail: AI, AR, VR
When you think of current trends in the consumer and retail sectors, buzzwords like “artificial intelligence”, “augmented reality” and “virtual reality” spring to mind. The retail scene is undergoing fundamental disruption – and these emerging technologies are centre-stage. Traditionally, such technologies were often characterised as mere “hype” and considered better suited for sci-fi movies rather than the real world. However, they are now very much a reality and continue to develop rapidly, causing consumers and retailers alike finally to take them seriously.
Retailers have started to exploit the progress made by tech giants to fulfil this demand. The gradual deployment of artificial intelligence, AR and VR in the consumer sector is enabling retailers to collect a large volume of data and gain a deep understanding of customer behaviours and preferences, which can translate into long term benefits for the consumer of the future. However, there are legal issues which arise and require consideration.
In this article we explore these technologies, including examples of their use in the retail sector and the associated legal issues.
Please click here to read the full article and download your copy.
2. Targeted advertising
In this briefing, we look at Targeted Advertising, including some of the methods that can be used for tracking consumers’ digital footprints, new technologies which are developing to identify consumer reactions to adverts, as well as certain privacy, data and consumer protection issues arising from this topic.
It is estimated that the average consumer is exposed to up to 10,000 ads in a single day. Advertising is a big part of the consumer experience and as technology increasingly plays a protagonist role in our daily lives, it is no news that online advertisements are steadily replacing the more traditional forms of publicity. Over 40% of the world’s population now has access to the internet and users are constantly leaving digital footprints, across a range of online channels, by willingly sharing mass volumes of useful data.
This creates a huge market for advertisers, as well as a vast pool of insightful information about consumer behaviours and preferences. Technology giants such as Google and Facebook are also making an impact by creating platforms that enable data not only to be collected more easily but also analysed and extracted.
These combined developments have kick-started the reshaping of the advertising industry, particularly in terms of enabling organisations to target advertising at their most receptive audiences.
And the forms of targeted advertising continuously evolve – they can be based on a wide range of information, including browsing history, purchasing habits, sociodemographic traits such as consumers’ age, gender, race and economic status, psychographic characteristics, including a consumer’s lifestyle, opinions and values, or geographic location, to name a few. Add to the mix the increasingly sophisticated technologies that companies are developing and applying to deepen their understanding of consumer reactions and accurately predict behaviours, and you end up in a world where advertising becomes almost shockingly personalised.
Please click here to read the full article and download your copy.
3. Targeting online risk
In this article, we look at some of the online risks threatening businesses today.
We examine the options available to tackle IP infringements online, such as the sale of counterfeit goods, with a focus on the most powerful weapon for rights holders – blocking junctions from the courts. We also provide some practical tips to help tackle and combat online infringements
Please click here to read the full article and download your copy.
4. Bricks and clicks: How M&A is accelerating the convergence of the high street and online
This briefing focuses on the fundamental changes to retailers’ models of operation that have occurred since the emergence of the internet as a retail platform. We look at how these changes have influenced recent M&A activity in the retail space and how this activity indicates a growing convergence of the operating models of online retails and traditional, bricks and mortar retailers.
While significant M&A activity between online and bricks and mortar retailers has only occurred in the past few years, the types of transactions that have been occurring are indicative of a convergence of the online and bricks and mortar operating models, as online retailers seek to take advantage of the operating models that bricks and mortar retailers had developed in response to the threat of online.
The consumer of the future may choose to order goods online during their lunch break and to pick them up from their local convenience store on the way home, whilst purchasing food for their evening meal. At the weekend they will likely travel to an out-of-town mega-mall to peruse the latest fashions and consumer electronics, which they order in-store for home delivery the next day, before heading for a meal and a trip to the cinema, or sample the latest interactive experience, all in the same bricks and mortar shopping mall.
Having spent the best part of two decades assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the apparently opposing, online operating model, it appears that traditional retailers are now ready to embrace an operating model than spans both online and bricks and mortar, and they are using M&A to accelerate such a move.
Please click here to read the full article and download your copy.
For further information, please contact:
Mark Robinson, Partner, Herbert Smith Freehills
mark.robinson@hsf.com
