Retail’s Crystal Ball — Problems with “The Store of the Future”

I work in eCommerce, and for the past few months, I’ve had a bit of a sinking feeling. If comes from a fleeting thought I think I’ve finally identified. What if the future of shopping is … people not shopping? Follow me on this train of thought for a couple of minutes.

When thinking about shopping there are a few key aspects to consider; the type of purchase, the timeliness of the need, and the experience. Each aspect has its own set of constraints and solutions, take “type of purchase”, is it clothing or a home good, put another way is it a commodity or isn’t it? Timeliness obviously has to do with, when do I need this, but more importantly can mean do I have faith I will get the item in time? Lastly, the experience, not just about good customer experience and niceness of the building, but also is the customer using the shopping experience as entertainment or an escape?

The first 2 aspects are slowly being addressed by technology and infrastructure. Commoditised items can (and are) be delivered via subscription or auto ordering/renewing tech. Non-commoditised items like clothing (this is arguable) can be picked out by experts and sent to you based on your preferences. Timeliness is being fixed by a number of players, next day/same day, robots/drones, and maybe eventually 3d printing. The future solutions to these problems will quite possibly be nothing listed here, but something better. The point is, in the near future the only reason left for shopping may be the entertainment value.

This has huge implications, in part, it means the future of shopping is in large part a combination of tech (IoT, mobile, good APIs, awesome future stuff), and fast reliable (cheap) distribution. If this is what we know about the future then as far as I know there is only 1 major retailer that has been working on this for years, and until recently they’ve never had a physical store.

Looking at my crystal ball, this means a bunch of retailers go away, and whoever is left compete on exclusives, amenities, price, and lifestyle plays. But what if it doesn’t work? What if, like TV, the shopping time shrinks and moves to another platform? Or like driving, people just find ways around it? What if people find other fulfilling escapes?

What if the future of shopping is … people not shopping?

Originally published at projectsite.co on April 15, 2016.