Where and how people shop will be driven by resilience
The benefits of an omnichannel retail approach have been widely discussed. Now, the need for digital omnipresence – an approach underpinned by digital’s ubiquity in both the real-world and online – will move center stage, creating new opportunities.
Digital discovery, commerce, and fulfilment will become atomized and distributed across the various places people spend their digital time. When people get inspired or remember something they need, brands need to be there available to buy – instantly.
Behemoths like Amazon and Alibaba will continue to make shopping more accessible, seamless, and price positive, but the enormous recent e-commerce uplift has pushed customer expectations even higher. From messaging apps to social networks and beyond, today shopping needs to be an integrated part of people’s digital lives.
Physical spaces will need to be redesigned as experience centers, built for entertainment, education and tailored service – all whilst integrating and benefiting the local communities they exist in. Shops will no longer be the final step of the sales funnel, but an integral part of the discovery and education experience.
We should think of stores as brand-building experience centers, not merely as places where goods and inventory conveniently collide with customer transactions.