China’s new retail revolution will completely transform how the world thinks about retail and digital innovation. But is the world ready yet? In this book, the authors share an insider’s perspective on what is happening in China to reveal the future for global retail, and a clear framework to help you prepare. The book presents a number of real-world cases, based on interviews and first-hand consumer experience, to decode China’s retail revolution so that you can understand what is happening and why, and what it means for the rest of the world. Crucially, the book identifies five critical stages in the development of new retail that global retail executives need to grasp now: lifestyle commerce, Online-Merge-Offline retail, social retail, livestream retail and invisible retail. To help the industry get ready for this new, China-inspired paradigm in retail, the authors present a practical and simple framework – a ten-year strategic roadmap for global retail executives, which we call the “Beyond” the Value Chain Model. China’s new retail is not just about fashion, cosmetics, snacks, data-driven convenient stores and commercial live streaming. At a time when the world of retail is being upended, it offers inspirational lessons in innovation, purpose and agility for global executives across the entire retail spectrum.
Few crises in modern history have so completely disrupted every aspect of daily life as has the Covid-19 pandemic. What began as a small medical ripple in Wuhan, China, a city many of us had never heard of, quickly erupted into a tsunami of epic proportions. Every market, industry, vertical, profession, service, and category of product was in some way rocked by its impact. And, for the first time in recorded history, every wheel, cog and gear in the global retail industry ground to a virtual halt. From two-time, international best-selling author and futurist Doug Stephens, Resurrecting Retail is not just a riveting story of the unprecedented crash of an industry during this time of crisis but a roadmap for its rebirth. Meticulously researched in real time from inside the crisis, Resurrecting Retail provides a comprehensive and surprising vision of how Covid-19 will reshape every aspect of consumer life, including the very essence of why we shop.
- A revised and updated edition of the Management Book of the Year (2018) - Provides a framework for adapting your brand to the consumer of today and tomorrow The award-winning retail handbook, The Future of Shopping: Where Everyone is a Retailer (2018 Management Book of the Year) is back in a new, updated edition. Since it was first published, we have experienced a pandemic, a digitization race, and the bankruptcy of numerous iconic shops. This one crisis year has meant more turnaround for the trade sector than an entire decade. This book addresses a new perspective on globalization, and the pressing questions of what brands and merchants must do to survive in this new retail landscape.
Explores the coming retail revolution, which will affect retailers of all sizes. The author paints a bold vision of the future, where the very concept of what a store is, how consumers shop and even what retail's core revenue model is, will all be profoundly reinvented, and he illustrates the vast opportunities available for courageous brands and business leaders. With real world examples and insights from industry disruptors
Retail is going through difficult times and is suffering the consequences of both the economic crisis and the digitization of society. Fundamentally, there is a bigger problem: stores cannot keep up with the changing behavior of customers who are connected 24/7, customers for whom there is no distinction between online and offline.The End of Online Shopping: The Future of New Retail in an Always Connected World describes how the smart, the sharing, the circular, and the platform economy are shaping a new era of always connected retail. Retailers urgently need to innovate if they want to stay relevant in a world dominated by marketplaces and sharing platforms. The book contains inspiring examples from different industries -- which include the usual suspects such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Google, but also local startups -- and covers all aspects of the customer journey, from orientation and selection to delivery.The End of Online Shopping provides an excellent overview of shopping trends and developments worldwide, and offers readers indispensable insights into the future of retail.
The modern retail system has worked to dazzling effect. From the 19th century, store owners emerged from small beginnings to set in train an industry that has seen some operators become nationally, even globally, dominant. Along the way, they turned retailing into an art, and then a science. Now retailers in emerging markets appear to be repeating the story all over again, except on a scale and at a speed beyond anything we have seen before. Given all of this, it can be hard for those who work in retailing to accept that the industry as we know it is living on borrowed time, on the brink of transformation. There is now an urgency with which conventional store-based retailers must now act and the extent of the challenges this change represents in strategic, organizational, and above all, technological terms. Reshaping Retail sets out the driving causes, current trends and consequences of a transformation in retail triggered by technology. The changes go far beyond making items available for sale on the internet. Starting by briefly setting the historical and business system contexts for retail and describe the role that technology has played in the creation of modern retail it then explains the underlying technological drivers behind the current revolution – radical changes in the capacity of both hardware and software, mobile telecommunications changes and the advances of the Internet. Ultimately, success will hinge on more than competence; it will come down to a way of thinking. Customer-centricity will need to be valued not just by the store owner, as in the past, but also by all employees in the organization. It will need to become embedded in their daily tasks. The same applies to technology, which must be at the center of the organization and recognized as such by everyone. With a combination of extensive desk and field research, interviews with leading retailers and technologists, together with the real world experience of practitioners in this area, Reshaping Retail will inspire and help store retailers to make the necessary transformation now to win in the new consumer driven world.
Traditional retail is becoming increasingly volatile and challenged as a business model. Brick-and-mortar has shifted to online, while online is shifting into pop-up storefronts. Virtual stores in subway platforms and airports are offering new levels of convenience for harried commuters. High Street and Main Street are becoming the stuff of nostalgia. The Big Box is losing ground to new models that attract consumers through their most-trusted assistant—the smartphone. What’s next? What’s the future for you—a retailer—who is witnessing a tsunami of change and not knowing if this means grasping ahold of new opportunity or being swept away? The Retail Revival answers these questions by looking into the not-so-distant retail past and by looking forward into a future that will continue to redefine retail and its enormous effect on society and our economies. Massive demographic and economic shifts, as well as historic levels of technological and media disruption, are turning this once predictable industry—where “average” was king—into a sea of turbulent change, leaving consumer behavior permanently altered. Doug Stephens, internationally renowned consumer futurist, examines the key seismic shifts in the market that have even companies like Walmart and Procter & Gamble scrambling to cope, and explores the current and future trends that will completely change the way we shop. The Retail Revival provides no-nonsense clarity on the realities of a completely new retail marketplace— realities that are driving many industry executives to despair. But the future need not be dark. Stephens offers hope and guidance for any businesses eager to capitalize on these historic shifts and thrive. Entertaining and thought-provoking, The Retail Revival makes sense of a brave new era of consumer behavior in which everything we thought we knew about retail is being completely reimagined. Praise for The Retail Revival “It doesn’t matter what type of retail you do—if you sell something, somewhere, you need to read Doug Stephens’ The Retail Revival. Packed with powerful insights on the changing retail environment and what good retailers should be thinking about now, The Retail Revival is easy to read, well-organized and provides essential food for thought.” — Gregg Saretsky, President and CEO, WestJet “This book captures in sharp detail the deep and unprecedented changes driving new consumer behaviors and values. More importantly, it offers clear guidance to brands and retailers seeking to adapt and evolve to meet entirely new market imperatives for success.” —John Gerzema, Author of Spend Shift and The Athena Doctrine “The Retail Revival is a critical read for all marketing professionals who are trying to figure out what’s next in retail… Doug Stephens does a great job of explaining why retail has evolved the way it has, and the book serves as an important, trusted guide to where it’s headed next. ” —Joe Lampertius SVP, Shopper Marketing, Momentum Worldwide and Owner, La Spezia Flavor Market “Doug Stephens has proven his right to the moniker ‘Retail Prophet.’ With careful analysis and ample examples, the author makes a compelling case for retailers to adapt, change and consequently revive their connection with consumers. Stephens presents actionable recommendations with optimism and enthusiasm—just the spoonful of sugar we need to face the necessary changes ahead.” —Kit Yarrow, Ph.D., Consumer Psychologist; Professor, Golden Gate University; Co-Author, Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings are Revolutionizing Retail “Doug Stephens doesn’t just tell you why retail is in the doldrums, he tells you why retail is a major signpost for the larger troubles of our culture and provides a compelling, inspiring vision for a future of retail—and business, and society.” —Eric Garland, author of Future Inc.: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next
This book covers the current trends and challenges faced by regulators, policymakers, and researchers in the field of retail electricity market design and regulation. It addresses the role that “smart” technologies are playing in reshaping how utilities and consumers interact with each other and with their generating technologies. The book covers topics including smart meter adoption, dynamic pricing, demand response, distributed and utility-scale solar, technology costs trends, and the microeconomic theory that governs our understanding of retailer and consumer incentives. Existing inefficiencies of transmission and distribution network pricing as well as the potential regulatory approaches that can be used to remedy them are discussed along with the advantages of retail competition and draw attention to the barriers that currently are preventing all of the benefits of retail competition from materializing. The book uses very recent data to provide the most up-to-date overview of retailing trends and policies in the USA, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. The book will be useful for researchers and regulators and policymakers.
With crisp and insightful contributions from 47 of the world’s leading experts in various facets of retailing, Retailing in the 21st Century offers in one book a compendium of state-of-the-art, cutting-edge knowledge to guide successful retailing in the new millennium. In our competitive world, retailing is an exciting, complex and critical sector of business in most developed as well as emerging economies. Today, the retailing industry is being buffeted by a number of forces simultaneously, for example the growth of online retailing and the advent of ‘radio frequency identification’ (RFID) technology. Making sense of it all is not easy but of vital importance to retailing practitioners, analysts and policymakers.
Physical retail isn’t dead—but boring retail is! Remarkable Retail equips the savvy retailer with eight essential strategies to thrive in an increasingly volatile and uncertain future. Digital technology has profoundly altered the competitive landscape for retailers. In Remarkable Retail, industry thought leader Steve Dennis argues that in a world of nearly infinite choice, where the lines between digital and physical are increasingly blurred, even being very good is no longer good enough. To win and keep customers today, retailers must be nothing short of remarkable. In most retail categories, digital channels are often central to the consumer’s journey, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t also shopping in stores; they’re just using them differently, often browsing in one channel and buying in the other. The notion of a physical store channel and an ecommerce channel is increasingly a distinction without a difference; the customer is the channel. The future belongs to those who embrace the blur of digital and physical that represents modern retail today and work to deliver an experience that is more harmonized and more memorable, regardless of how consumers decide to shop. Packed with illuminating case studies from some of modern retail’s biggest success stories—and leveraging Dennis’s more than thirty years as a senior executive and strategic consultant to dozens of brands—Remarkable Retail lays out the case for going beyond a slightly better version of mediocre and forging a path to being truly remarkable. To help retailers on this transformation journey, Dennis presents eight essential strategies for visionary leaders who are prepared to reimagine their way of doing business. A remarkable retailer is digitally enabled, human-centered, harmonized, mobile, personal, connected, memorable, and radical. In an age where consumers have short attention spans, myriad options, and a digitally integrated relationship with every brand, Remarkable Retail is your indispensable guide to creating a powerful retail experience that keeps your customers coming back for more.
