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Who in the world came up with the acronym IoT? The Internet of Things has to go down as one of the worst monikers for a product category! A recent study indicated 79 percent of consumers have no idea what IoT stands for, or what it means. The path to purchase requires you have some understanding of what a product or service is. And more importantly, a considered purchase requires you see personal value before spending a significant amount of money. The state of IoT, with consumers, would seem to be a perfect opportunity for retailers, especially stores. Yet, the success of selling IoT devices in retail stores has been pretty abysmal. It has turned out that IoT is not about selling "things" at all. IoT could represent a significant retail opportunity if retailers can shift focus to the basics of customer experience.
Why this is important: Retailers are stuck in a legacy of merchandising and selling things. Today's consumers aren't buying things because they connect to the internet. IoT won't sell well in retail unless retailers change the consumer experience.
IoT: A world of things most consumers don' know, or care about!
The Internet of Things is a network of things, devices, cars, and even buildings embedded with electronics to collect and share data via the Internet. Because these IoT devices are embedded with sensors and network communication, they can be connected in smart grids to monitor a wide variety of machines and people. The result is that IoT devices can churn out a mountain of monitoring data.
I've often wondered who managed to come up with a name like The Internet of Things. According to Wikipedia, a British entrepreneur named Kevin Aston first coined the term in 1999 while working with RFID devices. Hard to believe there wasn't another...