Retail (R)evolution
Retail suppliers, brands, and manufacturers alike have witnessed a sea change borne by shifting consumer preferences and new modes of interaction. Far from a “retail apocalypse,” the next wave of change will have consumers experience retail in entirely new ways, with atomized brands offering curated experiences and influencers marketing to specific niches.
Featured Companies in Our THeme
Why We're Excited About This Theme*
Our Expertise
- https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/loneliness-in-america
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/
- https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2022/mar/22/65-of-gen-z-feel-more-confident-online-with-community-focused-social-apps/
- https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/pet-care-market-104749
Key Trends in Our Theme
Customer Acquisition
Faced with changes in search, social advertising, and data privacy, customer acquisition has become increasingly expensive and operationally complex. To address this, there will arise a new wave of software solutions for last mile delivery, inventory management, and customer support.
Omnichannel Synergies
Physical brand experiences and purchase points are still critical in a consumer’s purchase process. The brands and retailers that can most effectively find ways to integrate the digital with the experiential, while maintaining real time visibility over supply chains and consumer profiles, will win.
Personalization
Moving from recommendation algorithms and endlessly customizable profiles, the younger generations have higher expectations for personalization, service, and flexibility in the way they shop. With the increasing amounts of data they gather, retailers will need to have well-defined strategies to drive personalization both at the product level and at scale.
Infinite Content
Long seen as a bottleneck for brands, content development now has the opportunity to move from expensive and laborious to being infinitely scalable. The winners in this new brand paradigm will be able to effectively combine language models that create consistently relevant and topical messaging with the backlog of content and IP that made their brands successful in the first place.