Happy New Year! The retail and consumer industries face a significant transformational opportunity in 2016. Here are my top five predictions for the industries this year.

E-commerce sales continue at a blistering pace. As per the U.S. Department of Commerce, third quarter 2015 e-commerce sales increased 15.1% from the third quarter of 2014; while total retail sales increased 1.6% in the same period.1

“U.S. internet users belong to more than 13 loyalty programs, on average, according to brand loyalty data analyzed by eMarketer. But only 50% of users are active members.” 1

In Retail, few issues differentiate the winners from the losers more clearly than successful loyalty and rewards programs. Perennial winners at Retail loyalty programs, such as Kroger and Nordstrom’s, build their entire business model around leveraging loyalty data to meet and exceed the needs of loyal (and

Donald Soares is CTO of Retail and Consumer at MarkLogic and is based out of our Chicago office. With over 20 years of experience working with Retail, Consumer and E-Commerce clients, Donald has a deep understanding of the unique needs of this vertical. That’s why he is so passionate about championing MarkLogic’s value proposition as the only Enterprise NoSQL database – a technology specifically designed to surmount the Big Data obstacles currently hindering the Retail and