If you think retail has changed a lot in the last 20 years, hold on to your hats. Or perhaps to your virtual reality goggles and bitcoins.
One of the sessions that packed people in at this year’s SXSW Interactive focused on where retail is heading—and why many retailers are in trouble if they’re not able to appeal to customers’ rapidly changing desires. “The one thing that really surprises and disappoints and shocks me is that a lot of C-level people see this as a problem to be solved,” said SXSW panelist Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business and consultant specializing in innovation. “You have to accept this isn’t just about building digital capabilities; it’s about changing your culture.”
Established retailers that fail to make the shift will be starting a new chapter, he said. “And it’s called Chapter 11.”
What should retailers focus on to avoid such a fate? The conversation at SXSW centered on three trends, each of which has plenty of devils in the strategic and execution details.
1. Customers’ expectations are changing—and quickly.
“How people want to shop is completely and utterly out of your control,” Schrage said. Consider, for example, new retail competitors that eschew websites for Instagram or focus on pop-up stores rather than permanent shops. “What does it mean to shop? New platforms can pop up and completely transform that,” Schrage warned. “We’re just a place for people to buy stuff.”
In fact, a significant chunk of customers expect that by 2020 they’ll be using emerging technologies, from bitcoin to augmented reality (AR), in their future shopping experiences, according to the recent Beyond Digital: What’s Next for Businesses in 2020 report from Infomentum .
Some 16% are anticipating 3-D-printed product downloads by then as well, and 15% want AR to enable […]
