Another National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show is in the rearview, and it somehow keeps getting bigger. Forty thousand people packed into the Javits Center, it felt like at least ten thousand of whom were in line with me at Starbucks at any given moment. After 18 years of attending—half as a retailer, half as a solution provider—I still love the chaos. For three days, the Hell’s Kitchen on the Hudson becomes the center of the retail universe.
NRF loves buzzwords, and 2026 was no exception. A few years ago, it was the Metaverse. This year- Agentic AI. You couldn’t walk ten feet without seeing the word “agentic.” But what mattered wasn’t the marketers’ line—it was what providers were actually showing and what retailers were genuinely talking about.
Across very different technologies and conversations, one theme kept surfacing: the real success in this business isn’t about new tools—it’s about focus on execution and managing the store, as they say.
That said, yes Agentic AI was everywhere, and for good reason. I’m a true believer in the power of AI. The technology is profoundly changing this industry. It’s enabling retailers to expose more discrete access to insights, automating process, and putting data directly into the hands of people when and where they need it.
Imagine a customer asking whether a pair of hiking boots meets a specific technical specification. Instead of the associate leaving the floor to “check the back,” they ask an AI agent in their hand. The agent confirms the specs and lets them know a matching pair is being unboxed on the loading dock right now. That’s a game changer.
For the headquarters team, imagine an analyst evaluating a new location using GIS. They create a hypothesis based on historical data, use known models, gather the data and run the initial analysis to confirm or challenge that hypothesis. But the real shift happens when the AI surfaces insights the analyst didn’t think to ask for. When the AI finds patterns, recognizes a risk or suggests an opportunity, that’s when the revolution happens.
This is retail and technology is critical but always, it’s fundamentals that drive success. Winners have strong value propositions, clear differentiation, meaningful innovation, and great design. Technology amplifies those strengths, but it doesn’t create them.
Enough editorializing, here’s what really stood out for me at the Javits Center this year.
Localization
Retailers continue to recognize the importance of precision in execution, from assortment planning to managing resources. Most aren’t opening hundreds of stores a year anymore, but they still have to drive sustainable growth. For mature retailers, that means larger baskets, more frequent trips, and new customers.
This requires understanding what this neighborhood needs versus the one ten miles away—and tailoring assortments, experiences, and messaging accordingly. The challenge is scale. For retailers operating across dozens or hundreds of markets, these nuances, by store and by digital interaction, are incredibly difficult to manage centrally.
Location intelligence provides the tools to manage localization effectively. It allows retailers to manage and analyze all their locations, with a local, spatially enabled lens.
Frictionless Commerce
This is an area I’m pretty bullish about and I’ve seen tremendous innovation over the last few years. At this year’s NRF there were some really great examples of cutting edge tech that I believe will be table stakes in the next couple years. Keeping in mind the goal is removing barriers between wanting something and getting it – in-store, online, pickup, delivery, walk-out checkout, mobile pay, whatever combination works. Important to remember that “frictionless” only works when you can answer WHERE questions in real time: Where is the inventory? Where is the customer? Where’s the closest fulfillment option? The infrastructure that makes commerce feel effortless is fundamentally spatial.
Optimizing Execution Across the Enterprise
Advanced analytics, machine learning, and big data remain essential to retail success. But the biggest challenge about retail—spoken from decades of experience—is that every strategy you deploy is immediately visible and easily copied. Retailers must constantly adapt based on what’s working, where it’s working, and why. That means understanding why a tactic succeeds in one geography and fails in another—and how to scale success or mitigate risk across the network.
Speed without accuracy will always fail. Accuracy without speed gives your competitor the opening.
Managing Uncertainty
The past year brought unprecedented chaos to the retail industry. Supply chains were disrupted, policy changes created volatility, and consumer confidence wavered in ways even sophisticated forecasts struggled to predict. No surprise that many solution providers showcased new tools designed to help retailers navigate uncertainty through modeling and improved forecasting. That said, these models are ineffective without a geographic lens. Tariffs, supply disruptions, and demand shifts don’t impact all markets equally.
Retailers need to model how different scenarios play out across their store networks, trade areas, and supply chain footprints—understanding where they’re most vulnerable and where they’re most resilient.
Retail Media Networks: A Story Still Being Written
One topic that generated serious conversation was retail media networks. In one session, one large retailer was quoted as getting 30% of their marketing profits from their retail media network. The industry is heading toward massive ad spend growth. I strongly agree with the prognosticators that this will be transformational from a revenue and customer engagement perspective.
But we’re early. In-store media is a tiny fraction of retail media spend, even though the physical store audience dwarfs digital. Massive revenue is sitting on the table.
Where’s this all going? Extending digital success to the physical store will require retailers to bring a geospatial lens to their network strategies: Which stores carry which brand advertising based on trade areas? Where in the space do you maximize impact? How do you prove ROI when the journey happens in real space, not clicks? The retailers who crack in-store retail media will understand this is fundamentally a spatial problem.
Wrapping Up the Big Show
The best night’s sleep I get all year is the first night after NRF, back in my own bed. Forty thousand steps in three days, surrounded by forty thousand colleagues, immersed in an industry I’ve been part of for five decades. NRF is always overwhelming. It’s so easy to get lost in the noise, the hype, the buzzwords. But having lived through multiple retail cycles, I’m always surprised how familiar many of these challenges are —even as the technology evolves.
Strip away the Agentic AI signage and vendor pitches, and the themes come through clearly: localization, frictionless commerce, operational precision, managing uncertainty, and retail media networks. Every one of these trends has a critical spatial component at its core.
Location intelligence isn’t competing with AI or other technologies. NRF reinforced that it’s the foundation that allows those technologies to work in the real world—where customers shop, stores operate, and revenue is generated.
Retailers who build spatial intelligence into their strategies from the ground up will be the ones who separate from the pack in 2026 and beyond.
