The world of retail is constantly changing, whether it’s influenced by new technology, the way new products are marketed or how consumers choose to shop, big changes are around the corner.
We decided to reach out to those who live and breathe everything retail and ask for their opinion on what we should expect for the future of retail.
Who better to ask than the experts, right?
Aditya Vijay Athanki – IBM Retail
There will be a fusion of physical and digital worlds where at some point in future consumers will intuitively shop without perceiving the difference in a world of superposed channels.
Data devices, people processes become intertwined and winners will differentiate with their ability to collect, manage, secure, analyze and act on the widest set of information to proactively provide engagement, assortment and services that meet individual consumer needs, wants and aspirations at any point in time.
While this may be a scene from a rather distant future, one can be assured that imminent. To remain relevant, retailers need to anticipate buying patterns and respond with ‘contextual engagement’. What is the next step in your journey to adapt, grow and continue to be profitable? Learn more from: www.ibm.com/retail
Consumers will regain control of the decisions, this time for real, period.
When the internet and social media (somewhat inadvertently) began to undermine mass marketing efforts, it was assumed that consumers took control into their own hands. And yet that wasn’t yet true. Shoppers at that time lacked the necessary tools to find the exact products they wanted, at the prices they wanted and delivered in the particular ways they wanted. Marketers, seeking to regain control they perhaps hadn’t yet lost, responded by learning to analyze browsing and purchase history and ostensibly creating personalized offers.
Retailers want to demonstrate, it seems, that they know best what consumers want. That movement is still in the developing stages, and yet we see a good deal of pushback from consumers who find personalized offers unsatisfactory and get creeped out when retailers let on how much they know about them.
The future will belong to retailers that empower consumers to make their own decisions. It’s quite a simple concept, and yet it requires a different mindset than trying to second guess consumers’ desires. To give them what they want, retailers might try asking.
There will be continued turmoil as retailers & shopping malls strive to come to grips with the complexity & opportunities of Omni channel retailing. Very quickly those that don’t ‘get with it’ will drift away.
Following this there will be a surge of creativity in store & website environments, as malls reinvent themselves [or become outdated & unappealing], & with the re-adjustment of retailer’s ‘value propositions’.
This reassessment will be forced by the accelerated growth of the super-low
price/value merchants like Uniqlo, Aldi & Amazon. Their growing market share will put pressure thoughout the market & on up to the so-called ‘luxury brands’. These will be forced to complete a total transformation of their offering – consumers can only be hood-winked for so long!
Shoppers are dictating the future of retail. They’re empowered with information and options, and for the first time ever, they’re the ones calling the shots.
Retailers will have to restructure their entire organizations and shopping experiences to reflect the cross-channel, circuitous way shoppers shop. Digital and physical channels will have to converge into one branded, value-added shopping journey.
Historically, in retail, the future comes slowly, so what was just a buzzword three years ago is what retailers will still be conceptualizing, adopting, and optimizing tomorrow, and that’s omnichannel.
Omnichannel flexibility will look different for every retailer – whether it’s click and collect, or the ability to return online purchases in-store, or however else a company may define omnichannel for itself – but the key is still to unify a brand’s underlying processes such that customers perceive a single entity, even when they interact with it across multiple channels.
Complete, connected transparency into every activity across channels is what makes it happen on the retail end, and that’s what businesses get with the Retail Pro retail management platform.
Young people will grow up with an eye to having their own store-either online or brick and mortar.
Barriers to entry are vanishing and they can learn anything they need prior on YouTube, funding options abound and the idea of working for someone else is growing increasingly bad.
We’re already seeing 9-yr. olds with their own bowtie business, 11 and 13 yr. olds with their own coffee businesses and the talent on reality shows is going down exponentially. They will all be looking to leverage their entrepreneurship while still in school.
Dan Hartveld – Red Ant
Connected customer experience the future of retail – most retailers agree that it is key to success in a highly-competitive climate which is becoming increasingly driven by technical advances.
In a fast-moving, technically-enabled world where customer behaviours are rapidly evolving along with their expectations, context-appropriate, consistent experiences can only be achieved by developing a mobile-first strategy that connects data capabilities across the business.
That means using mobile to bring together all business areas from customer service through to stock management, giving a single view of customer activity that drives efficiencies, delivers excellent customer experiences and increases sales.
Food – Big box stores will be a thing of the past, given drastically changed shopping habits and online shopping. Food shops will be conducted on the move via mobile/Apple watch etc- apart from the treaty food shopping done as a top-up in higher-end food stores.
Non-food – Brands will become singularly less important especially in apparel as savvy shopping becomes the norm. This is due to a growing trend for “experiences” to replace material possessions to some extent where disposable income is concerned – i.e. it’s not what you have/wear but what you do/see.
Nicole Leinbach Reyhle – Retail Minded
I believe the future of retail will be more defined by the consumer versus the stores themselves.
Consumers have more control than ever when it comes to making purchase decisions, and for this reason we will see a huge shift in not only consumer behavior, but how consumers choose to shop.
Vaughan Rowsell – Vend
There is a huge disruption coming in retail over the next few years around mobile technology. This is not just mobile payments, but other technologies that are changing the way retailers do business.
Expect more retailers to run their business entirely on apps. Retailers can now pick and choose apps to essentially create their own, tailor-made IT system from point-of-sale to finance, inventory and marketing. And it’s not only for the big stores – mobile and cloud technologies are powering a resurgence of SMB and independent retailers, with their accessible price points and ease of use.
Now, your whole business can be run on an iPad, and a retailer can be up and running operationally within a day. This is transformative for many businesses, from saving time and money, reducing friction points for customers like long queues, and allowing a manager to check in on the business and sales information remotely.
Rich Kizer & Georganne Bender – Kizer & Bender
Our number one prediction: Shoppers want to date technology, they don’t want to marry it.
There are technologies available right now that make shopping fun, and easier for the consumer. While they are intrigued by what’s available to enhance the in-store experience, they are turned off when they realize they are being “watched” as they shop.
In one way or another, technologies that offer retailers a deeper insight into what customers want, coupled with the opportunity to interact with shoppers even when there is no sales person there to help, will make their way onto sales floors everywhere.
Retailers need to ensure that their customers understand the in-store technologies they utilize so they feel comfortable – and safe – using them as intended.
My number 1 prediction for the future of retail is that all channels will
become blurred to the point of being indistinguishable. Retailers will be
delivering such a technology-enabled omni-channel experience that shops will be showrooms and fulfilment centres where customers could simply wander in, automatically checking-in with their mobile device, receiving tailored pricing and promotions, and they will be able to pick up an item and walk out with it, knowing that it’s been charged directly to their mobile account.
For more complex purchases they’ll use digital guided selling solutions to refine their choices, perhaps interact with a product expert (virtually or face to face), maybe use some augmented reality to experience a product pre-purchase, or perhaps order something to be uniquely 3D printed to their size and specification.
Whatever the experience looks like, technology is going to be developed that engages and entertains customers, that simplifies the shopping process or makes it more convenient, or that enables really fantastic levels of personalisation and co-creation between retailer and customer.
Frankly the opportunities are endless, limited only by our imaginations, and it’s going to be really exciting to see more and more digitally enabled shopping experiences being developed by the innovators and eventually being part of what consumers come to expect as a “normal” experience!