Future of Retail
Jim Whyte, Senior Insights Analyst, FITCH: “With the rise of online and mobile commerce, physical stores must find a new relevance to shoppers who already have a world of digital choice and convenience at their fingertips. The answer lies in heightened service, specialism and brand experience – usually seamlessly integrated with digital channels. This rebalancing away from the dogma of squeezing every last drop of revenue out of each square metre will create the space necessary for our high streets to flourish again. These environments are not just homogenous centres of commerce, but must also be the embodiment of local culture, community and creativity. The pressure and potential of technological change is forcing retailers to rediscover a more complementary and sustainable role in this balance.”
www.fitch.com
At A1 Retail lately we’ve all been trying to imagine what the store of the future might look like. This was quite a hard task, so we decided to ask some industry leaders to help with their opinions…
Speak to anyone in the industry and they will tell you that retail is changing. With the economy the way it is, it’s imperative that retail moves forward to present customers with the most irresistible retailing experience available, whether that means improving communications, updating store designs or investing in new technologies. A recent panel led by London Business School Professor Patrick Barwise, Chairman of Which?, has unveiled a vision for British retailing in 2020. The ‘Retailtopia’ vision
looks beyond the short-term challenges facing the retail sector and suggests a positive future for British shopping in an increasingly internet-connected and mobile society. The findings were very insightful, suggesting that a personal and interactive shopping experience would thrive, encouraging customers to ‘seamlessly integrate their shopping across virtual and physical boundries’. The findings placed focus on the physical store as an essential element of retail in
the future, and how it may adapt to compliment digital channels. Multi- channel retailing will gain momentum, and as geographical boundaries become less of a problem, retailing online looks to become a truly global process. Discussing the potential future of retail is exciting, and once we’d started looking into it, we were eager to learn more. As a result, we decided to quiz some experts in the industry on how they feel the future retail environment might shape up.
20
www.a1retailmagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84