The consumer holds all the cards now. Secondly, physical
stores must move beyond product and work to design and
deliver truly engaging, unique, personalized and surprising
experiences for shoppers. Stores will be places that people go
to learn, be inspired, co-create and be entertained. It’s not that
stores won’t sell products—they will. But the primary purpose
will be to give customers something they can’t get online; a
memorable, physical experience.
P: Why is it important for business owners to know what
the future of retail is, even if retail is only a small
component of their overall revenue?
S: The way I look at it everything is retail. That may sound self-
serving but it’s true when you consider that the term retail
simply means taking a product or service and parceling it out to
individual customers. In that sense, everything from banking
and insurance to healthcare and travel is retail. And to differing
extents all businesses face the same disruption; that
consumers today have a myriad of options in every product
category that they never had before and more importantly, they
have access those options via the internet. Therefore, every
business now needs to deliver on an elevated set of consumer
expectations. Having a mediocre product and a big advertising
budget won’t cut it anymore.
P: Why do you think that brands who play it safe in
retail will eventually fail?
S: There isn’t really an option to play it safe. In fact, the safer a
brand opts to play it, the more danger they put themselves in.
Chiefly because there’s a new breed of disruptor in the market-
place that isn’t playing by the established rules. Amazon,
Netflix, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb and others have built fortunes by
identifying archaic industry paradigms and rules and deliber-
ately breaking them. But they do so in order to provide
Stephens says that the key to thriving in the future of retail is learning to
give your customers a memorable experience.
July 2017
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