CES is the land of dreams for early adopters, geeks and of course consumer electronics companies looking to ply their wares.  On a side note, we learned it isn’t a comfortable environment for movie directors.

We all know that CES is a place for new, exciting, emerging products – but the question WE were curious about was how much that excitement translated over to where the magic happens: in retail stores.  Sales data analysis proved largely inconclusive, beyond the lift that available SKUs featured at CES see.  We thought we’d see how CES influences conversations happening in the stores.  So, we asked some retail sales associates (RSAs) about it.**

Turns out, CES is coming up in conversations, a lot.

Note the chart above. This is good news for both CES itself and the brands investing millions of dollars in a presence there.  If three-fourths of RSAs are talking in some form or fashion about these emerging products and technologies, this validates both the importance of the show and also that of the retail environment itself.  Online forums can discuss CES and the technologies there, but that’s a different (and largely unsatisfying) conversation relative to the one you’d have with a live person showing you live products you can hold in your hand.

We also found that these conversations are productive.  RSAs reporting that 90% of these conversations or demos are as long or longer than a traditional consumer interaction.  So the emerging technology – which typically is of interest to early adopters or the tech savvy – is leading to in-depth conversations which typically lead to higher sales.

Through these conversations, according to the RSAs, the most popular category of interest out of CES was around wearable tech – 58% of those surveyed said that was the most buzzworthy item out of CES.  Other products mentioned (in order) were televisions, cameras and phones.

So the recommendation is clear: use your emerging technologies and training programs with RSAs to both drive and control the conversations happening in retail.

**3-question survey was conducted with random RSAs in Best Buy, Lowes, Home Depot, regional CE vendors (Fry’s, HHGregg) as well as Verizon, Sprint, AT&T wireless store, 1/15/2014 – 1/31/2014.