These are the four big retail trends coming in 2017

Online shopping has now reached a decade of maturity. We all use services like Amazon Subscribe & Save—and we do so through our phones, following advertisements we see on Facebook.

Yet while the internet forever changed shopping, the physical retail environment lagged behind. That is until recently. In 2016, we saw some of the first hints of how traditional stores are about to change, too: an Amazon storethat lets you grab whatever you like without paying for it, e-commerce companies open physical locations, and high fashion taking inspiration from your local chain drugstore self-checkout. And over the next few years, the brick-and-mortar buying experience will change even more dramatically.

We talked to experts in retail, ranging from the analyst to the scientist to the marketer, about the big retail trends around the corner. Stores aren’t going anywhere any time soon. But they are about to look and feel a whole lot different from the way they did before. Here are the big retail trends to look out for in 2017 and beyond.

Millennials are moving to cities, and they’re not buying cars. “We have an entire industry around suburban big-box grocery stores,” says Aidan Tracey, CEO at product branding collective sgsco. “Loading a case of water and diapers on your back and getting on the bus isn’t going to work.”

They might look begin to look more like a warehouse with a tiny retail storefront that would be car- or Uber-pickup friendly, while the big-box store companies open more small satellites stores with less inventory.

“We had been operating for this idea that bigger is better, the superstore or supercenter. Now we’re seeing a shift away from that, brands closing their stores, reconsidering their footprint,” says Sidney Morgan-Petro, retail editor at the trend forecasting agency WGSN.

Bron en volledig bericht: Co Design 

E-commerce drives retail experience

ecommerce

E-commerce continues to change consumers’ expectations of the retail experience, as businesses like Amazon raise the bar in terms of service and delivery and put pressure on marketers to deliver across multiple paths to purchase in both the digital and physical worlds.

Writing in the current issue of Admap, Lucie Green, worldwide director of the Innovation Group, the futures and innovation think tank at J. Walter Thompson, observes that digital is infused throughout the buying process, making it difficult to separate e-commerce from shopping in general.

JWT’s own research, for example, indicates that 83% of US consumers and 82% of UK consumers have shopped on Amazon in the past year.

“Amazon has become the gravitational centre of e-commerce to a degree not seen before, setting a baseline for what consumers expect from online shopping,” she says.

So faster delivery times are now assumed, while click-and-collect is widely accepted.

But digital shopping is rapidly becoming about more than convenience, as innovative companies blend utility with experiential marketing, both on- and offline.

Selfridges department store on London’s Oxford Street has launched a wellness platform, for instance, which includes digitally immersive yoga with the Yung Club.

Bricks-and-mortar outlets are also exploring how digital immersion can help create “retail theatre” in-store, especially for purchases that aren’t simply utilitarian in nature – there’s always Amazon Dash for those.

Bron en volledig bericht: Warc