Dr Winter Nie of IMD Business School On The Future Of Retail In The Post Pandemic World
An Interview With Orlando Zayas
For certain product categories, I’m afraid you have to accept the harsh reality of what is happening. Once you accept that reality for some products, you can do a few things to combat this strong competition. First, you can offer a service that the customer really values and is willing to pay for. This is not the service you think the customer wants, but rather what they really want. Second, you need unique product design and innovation. Third, the branding is extremely important to build emotional connection with consumers to fulfil their identification needs.
As part of our series about the future of retail, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Winter Nie.
Dr. Winter Nie is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at top business school, The Institute for Management Development (IMD) based in Lausanne (Switzerland) and Singapore.
Dr Nie is the former regional director of IMD Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (2016–2019). She is Dean of China, responsible for business development and client relationship for IMD China Market. She sits on the boards of Opsis, Singapore and Valuesense Group, China.
Dr. Nie is well published in both academia and practitioner-oriented journals. In addition to a Ph.D. in management and business, she holds a Tavistock Consulting Advanced Certificate: Decoding Group Dynamics — Facilitating and Consulting to Groups and Teams (2009–2013).
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I grew up in a family with lots of books. I discovered that, whenever I was reading a book, my grandmother wouldn’t ask me to do any household chores — so I read a lot! Alongside reading, my other great passion in life is travelling. Being a professor allows me to read books and have time to travel as well.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
Whenever I finish a program, my mind will replay my session. I teach both Chinese and Western executives and I noticed that I was sometimes getting very different feedback. Whereas the Chinese participants were very positive about my efforts to provide a broad context for understanding the overall situation, the Western participants’ comments were that I was sometimes too broad and not conclusive enough. I realised that, for the Chinese executives, coming from a highly contextual culture, they need to understand the big picture to grasp concepts and work out the right way for themselves. But, for Western participants, the emphasis is more on logical and linear learning than the context. As a result, I have learned to adapt my teaching style to different audiences.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or takeaway you learned from that?
Earlier in my career, I was working in the US as a tenured professor and they had a “bring your child to work” day. I brought my five-year-old daughter along to one of my classes for a few minutes so that she could see what my job involved. On the way home, I asked her what she thought of the day. (I wish that I had not asked this question at that time.) She said, “Mommy, you are so boring!” Of course, five-year-old children do not lie. After dinner, I asked her how she knew that I was boring when she was in the class only for a few minutes. She said that her kindergarten teacher always told stories and I did not. Lesson learned: As human beings, you don’t just deliver knowledge, you have to offer context and tell stories to bring the knowledge to life.
Are you working on any new exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
My new book — The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China’s Retail Revolution (Routledge) co- authored with Mark J Greeven, Yunfei Feng and James Wang– has just been published, so I am working on unpacking a lot of the research and information into digestible, actionable articles that people can relate to and apply in their own contexts.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
It is very important to pay close attention to our emotions — both when we are feeling up and down. Don’t ignore those emotions. A lot of people turn to meditation to help manage the stress, but that doesn’t work for me. I find walking is extremely helpful. Whenever I am stressed out, I walk. It’s my own form of meditation.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are so many people who have helped me or given me guidance along the way. I would not want to pick out one. However, I want to share an experience I had with an executive in one of my programs. Sometimes people give me what we might call “honest” feedback, which I can actually find quite upsetting. Early on in my career, one executive told me that I had not pointed out that some teams had done a poor job of presenting a project, even though it was obviously not up to the mark. I should have had the courage to ask the teams to redo the work. I was defensive when I heard his comment. But, reflecting on the fact that I was being so defensive, I knew he had a point. Now, whenever I get honest feedback, I swallow my pride, take it on board and learn from it — doing so helps one make greater progress.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I do executive coaching in my work, and as part of that I do some pro bono work for young people who are starting out on their careers and small business owners. I stick to three rules: listen with empathy, don’t judge and don’t preach. As a professor, I always encourage and enable the young people who work with me to think about their own careers, rather than just being my assistants.
Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that large retail outlets are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?
One idea that we have seen is livestreaming by CEOs and business owners, as well as government officials, to promote products. One great example of this trend is Ms. Dong Mingzhu, Chair and President of Gree. As the head of the world’s largest residential air conditioner manufacturer, she is a highly respected businesswoman. At the age of 67 in 2020, she decided to take up online streaming to help sell her company’s products during the pandemic. Her first attempt was deemed something of a failure as she only sold products worth USD 32,000. But, undeterred, by the end of the year, she had completed 13 livestreams and made USD 9.3 billion in revenue — more than a quarter of the firms’ total in 2020.
In your opinion, will retail stores or malls continue to exist? How would you articulate the role of physical retail spaces at a time when online commerce platforms like Amazon Prime or Instacart can deliver the same day or the next day?
Yes, absolutely. Physical stores will continue to exist because we will still need them for certain experiences, for example, with products that have more emotional connotations. Human beings are also very impulsive and more likely to buy items when they see them in physical form. Finally, social shopping will continue to be important — getting together with friends or family to share an experience. Shopping and consuming combined with social gathering and entertainment fulfil multiple aspects of our basic needs.
The so-called “Retail Apocalypse” has been going on for about a decade. While many retailers are struggling, some retailers, like Lululemon, Kroger, and Costco are quite profitable. Can you share a few lessons that other retailers can learn from the success of profitable retailers?
All really successful retailers, whether online or physical stores, have three things in common. One, they sell something perceived to be unique — they give you something you cannot find elsewhere. Two, they offer value for money consistently (the key word here is consistently). And three, they stay fresh and keep evolving.
Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise to retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?
For certain product categories, I’m afraid you have to accept the harsh reality of what is happening. Once you accept that reality for some products, you can do a few things to combat this strong competition. First, you can offer a service that the customer really values and is willing to pay for. This is not the service you think the customer wants, but rather what they really want. Second, you need unique product design and innovation. Third, the branding is extremely important to build emotional connection with consumers to fulfil their identification needs.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.
From my work and research, which is also explored in my latest book, the five factors that create an amazing experience for customers are:
- Location-based or lifestyle commerce, for example, offering everything at your fingertips via an app, from breakfast to dinner and everything in between.
- Merging online/offline experiences, so that consumers have all the choices they need from both realms via a connected experience.
- Social ecommerce, where you combine social networks, value for money and entertainment into one offering.
- Livestream shopping to go direct to consumers by (the live streamer) offering the service of a human search engine who finds the best products and services and even negotiates the price on behalf of their fan club.
- The ultimate retail experience that offers consumers the chance to buy a piece of the dream of a life they don’t have but wished they did.
Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My movement would be to ask all online shoppers at the checkout: “Is this item recyclable?”
How can our readers further follow your work?
Please check out my new book — The Future of Global Retail / You can also read about some of my work on IMD’s platform Iby.IMD.org.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Orlando Zayas is the CEO of Katapult, an award-winning omnichannel payment platform. Zayas is known for his revenue growth strategies and visionary leadership in the eCommerce and retail space. His future-forward expertise has led companies such as GE Capital, Safe-Guard Products International, and DRB Capital. Zayas is also highly committed to providing educational opportunities to underprivileged communities through his philanthropic endeavors. Zayas’ business insights are regularly featured in publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Retail Insights, and more.
