Reinventing Consumer Services: from retailing, entertainment to elder care to delivery

Section 12 from “Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology” which will be released the end of January. I will be posting a new section daily. Please share your feedback as this is a work in progress.

Key drivers: Mobile, AI, internet, communications, social networking, voice and image technology, sensor & cameras, data, mass personalized manufacturing.

The way we shop and consume products and services has started to change over the last decade, with the decline of traditional brick and mortar companies, although not necessarily leading to the downfall of brick and mortar itself.

Technology is changing the way we discover products (Pinterest), how we order them (Instacart with groceries), how we make purchase (Apple Pay or Square), and how we find what’s right for us (Stitchfix for buying more personalized clothes). The supply chain is being reinvented, starting from 1 hour deliveries, a virtual pantries within minutes from many homes, all the way to completely reinvented grocery stores. Wallet share is changing as well from physical products to technology-enabled experiences like more personalized hotels or “stay rooms” such as AirBnB. Space is transforming to be more efficient and serve people for multiple purposes — the brick and mortar as we know it will shift, and we are already seeing this.

Yet we are seeing more physical local bookstores, which might actually mean a rebirth of the community experience, unlike product experiences of Amazon! We might even see more display retail rather than full inventory stores to provide community and shared time experiences with friends. However, these dynamics are hard to predict to the point it is hard to gauge the direction of change. Will the future hold more or less local retail? More of less community experiences and spaces? Instacart is disrupting the need for full grocery stores, while retail stores are also doubling as coffee shops or yoga studios when not in use. Retail will be more efficient for more than just selling products or serving as local distribution hubs and product display hubs. We may even see the rise of mobile spaces taking over parking lots or having the ability to use space better and reach out to people.

Experiences, especially shared and community experiences, will be more in demand, be it Sephora or yoga or coffee. Retailing may take on other manifestations too hard to predict, but inventory carrying stores may be passe. On the other hand, custom clothing on the spot fit to your body, made robotically, may not be too far away. 3D printed custom items from sofas to shoes as well, or fully personalized products. As a result, with tools like robots and AI, we will be more efficient and will reduce costs to redistribute to other places. For instance, will we see roboticized restaurants building customized, fresher, and less expensive, or more accessible, fresh, fast food with no food deserts?

In the future, we will be able to fully customize fabrics or products, we may be even able to 3D print these on-demand, disrupting supply chains. Sensors will become smaller and cheaper to enable more, if not most, things to be connected and controlled in a seamless way. We will have more data about us (whether it’s microbiome/genetic data for food, size/fit data for clothes, or music taste for buying composed music just for us using AI), that will allow for further personalization of our shopping list. Microbiome/genetic data could influence our for grocery shopping, size/fit data — clothes, or music taste for buying composed music just for us. All that can be enabled by the use of AI. Nevertheless, the use of such detailed data carries a possible danger connected to it, too. Regulation will have to strengthen on who controls/owns what data.

I want more data about me and I want to control it, share it temporarily for a particular purpose to provide me services and rescind permission at will. Will the blockchain allow this without centralized trust? AI is also allowing us to have more tailored experiences to either design the right furniture for our home. It can make new foods using algorithms, be it Watson cookbook or startups using AI to characterize proteins and design new foods. It can redefine our interactions with customer service when ordering an item. Robotics are also changing the game — starting with Amazon Echo which changes how we interact with our environment, including shopping, e.g. via voice in our home. Elderly care robotics can take care their needs or prevent elderly from getting lonely, while other robotics can optimize manufacturing times and deliveries. These tools and technologies, be it voice technology, AI, or robotics, are changing the way we live and work and this will only be accelerated in years ahead.

**This is a section from “Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology”. To read the previous section, click here.