By Trevor Studd
The rise of e-commerce and other alternative selling models are negatively impacting the center-store.
To create some excitement and give a reason for shoppers to spend more time — and money — in the center-store, retailers and brands alike are increasingly leveraging interactive displays like the ones offered by startup Perch.
For more on this topic, read our Store Of The Future report here.
Back to Paris
Another thing I noticed while in Paris is how much more likely I was to make a purchase if the store associates were knowledgeable.
If I had to place my bets, I would say tech-powered human store associates may become a retailer’s best asset!
Stay happy,
Thomas
The combination of consumers wanting to reduce their ecological footprint, new tech solutions, and regulatory pressures — think about the ban of single-use plastic products — is pushing brands to consider more eco-friendly packaging options. French luxury house Hermès, for one, revealed a refillable lipstick earlier this month. Clients can read more on this here.
Interestingly, only 9% of you voted for faster delivery, despite next-day delivery offerings making some headlines in 2019. Isn’t faster better anymore?
Some panelists at the 2020 NRF conference were actually making the point that consumers may be willing to wait a little bit longer to get their purchased delivered if that meant reducing their impact on the environment. Certainly something that should be on e-tailers’ minds.
And the biggest opportunity for innovation in 2020 goes to...
Center-store reinvention and personalized shopping communication tied, with 24% of the votes each.
Thomas Sineau CB Insights
Bonjour everyone!
A recent trip to Paris (that included a few too many shopping strolls) got me thinking: what will retail look like in 2020?
I would personally love to see smaller and more exciting product assortments.
But let’s talk about what YOU think.
A couple of weeks ago we asked for your opinion on where the consumer and retail landscape is heading. Thanks to the hundreds of you who responded!
Here are the results (percentages are rounded), and spoiler alert: personalization and sustainability are top-of-mind.
Invisible tech > shiny tech
Many of you (37%) think that automatic checkouts will be the most transformative in-store tech solution in 2020, followed by AI-enabled shelf analytics (33%).
2020 Retail Predictions
Published on January 31, 2020
Both solutions can be made relatively invisible for shoppers — think computer vision — while solving major pain points by eliminating checkout lines and reducing out-of-stock items.
For more on how automatic checkout is going to impact retail, check out our brief here.
Personal and sustainable
When it comes to what consumer categories are the most ripe for disruption, we saw a tie, with both personal care and household essentials receiving 31% of your votes.
There are 3 mega-trends that come to mind to explain these results.
Consumers’ rising demand for more personalized products and recommendations is expected to drive innovation in an already very active personal care market. More on that in our Beauty trends 2020 report.
You will also find in this report that wellness — another mega-trend — isn’t only impacting personal care, but starting to enter household products (with aromatherapy for example).
At the same time, the increased focus on sustainability is pushing household essentials brands to rethink everything from formulation to packaging. Lighter and refillable packaging could also help improve shipping economics of bulky household products such as detergent.
Grove Collaborative — a new unicorn in 2019 — is a good example of a disruptor focusing on the intersection of sustainability and e-commerce in the personal care and household essentials spaces.
Sustainability for the win (again)
Sustainability was also top-of-mind here, with 29% of you voting for sustainable packaging as being the consumer demand with the most runway ahead of it.