WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Retailers can address overcapacity in their portfolio in several ways (Exhibit 4). Options include reinvigorating core categories within a store, repurposing certain areas of the store, renting out space to other businesses, right-sizing the store, removing it from the network entirely, or redeveloping it as a mixed-use property, perhaps with residential space—an especially palatable solution in regions with housing shortages.

In the United States and Western Europe, grocery-store chains are seeing their sales and margins fall--and things could get even worse. Here are six ways the grocery industry can reverse the trend.

That said, a handful of forward-thinking malls are leading the way in advanced analytics. They’re using prescriptive and predictive analytics—built into user-friendly tools with strong data-visualization capabilities—to make smarter business decisions. In this article, we home in on how malls are using advanced analytics in an especially critical part of their business: revenue management. They’re determining the best mix of stores, understanding and planning store adjacencies that drive higher consumer spending and longer mall visits, and engaging in more-informed rent negotiations with tenants. It’s paying off: malls using these tools have increased their leasing revenues by double-digit percentages.

Experimental Design imagines another scenario: neighborhoods eliminate the growing stream of delivery vehicles by organizing central locations or deploying a kind of package delivery van that comes around once or twice a day like an ice-cream truck. Neighbors might gather around the day’s influx of retail goods and exchange news, transforming the hermetic life behind closed garage doors into a more open and collaborative kind of community.

Retailers at the Future Stores event in Seattle had a lot to say about where they thought the future of the store is headed. Here are some of the top takeaways.

The future of retail by Trendwatching: "Because while consumers may not care about the future of retail, they’re still busy creating that future. They’re fueled by a set of unchanging human needs. And their expectations never stand still. They want greater convenience. They want better value. They want excitement, meaning, status, relevance, authenticity, social connection and more."

Modern AI can figure out patterns, classify objects, make decisions and evaluate the results. It can learn and adapt to new situations using feedback loops. It’s awesome software. You don't need to pay someone to make an analysis then pay someone to create a piece of software then pay someone to validate the outcome then realize it’s not doing  what you expected then go back and tweak the software. That whole cycle can take years in large organizations, yet a properly designed process powered by artificial intelligence can do that in a matter of days. It can recode itself, roll the changes out, and verify if it’s actually moving the needle in a direction that you want — all at an accuracy and speed beyond human ability. Quite powerful. Quite threatening.

Know what it takes to deliver the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back.

Know what it takes to deliver the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back.

Know what it takes to deliver the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back.

Know what it takes to deliver the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back.

Ready for unique insights into Canada’s e-commerce holiday landscape – and tips on how to make the most of this 2018 holiday season?

In today's "digital age," the dominant narrative is that e-commerce has fully eclipsed physical retail. The truth looks a bit different.

Strategically, that means additive is becoming a full-fledged competitive weapon: It can be used to hold on to market leadership, to dethrone a dominant player, or to diversify by exploiting a printer’s capability to make products for different industries. Consequently, leaders need to understand additive’s range and potential and the possibilities that will open up in the near future. This article offers a playbook.

As digital technology erodes profit and revenue growth, why aren’t companies responding with bold strategies?

Many of the companies I work with are undergoing some form of a “Digital Transformation” to ensure they stay competitive and relevant into the future. These big, transformational changes are very hard and require far more than an investment in new technologies. They require a clear and solid strategy for how technology can be used to transform the business and provide better customer experiences, a culture that embraces change and collaborates heavily, and the technology capabilities to execute the strategy quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, these digital transformation initiatives will end up just like the failed ERP projects of the past we’ve all heard about or been a part of.

The future of retail is playing out in China's mom-and-pop shops. Alibaba says that over the last year, it has redone about 1 million mom and pop shops like the Huangs' across China. It has done the same with about a hundred superstores. Big and small, these outlets buy all their goods through Alibaba's platform and pay using its affiliate Alipay app.

Innovation is critical for established companies to stay relevant in the face of disruption. Here's our list of corporate innovation labs.

In the 2018 Digital Business Report, MIT SMR and Deloitte find that digitally maturing organizations encourage distributed leadership and a healthy appetite for experimentation.

"When you have rising monetization, rising growth and rising data collection, it drives a lot of regulatory scrutiny whether it’s related to data privacy, competition or safety in content."

But with the $13.7 billion acquisition, Amazon had bought itself a real shot at remaking the $800 billion U.S. grocery sector—the last frontier of e-commerce and a massive one at that. Some 20% of retail spending goes toward food, but only 2% of those sales take place on the Internet. “Grocery is the Wild West for online,” says Carrie Bienkowski, the chief marketing officer of online grocer Peapod. “The size of the prize is huge, and it’s growing.”

Designer Martine Jarlgaard has launched a pilot initiative that uses the blockchain to enable both transparency and trust around her collections as part of this week's Copenhagen Fashion Summit. Each garment has a unique digital token, enabling Provenance to verify every step of its production and create a digital history of that information including location data, content and timestamps, all of which is presented to consumers via an interface they can access through their item’s QR code or NFC-enabled label (so that it works on both Apple and Android devices).

An analysis of more than 400 use cases across 19 industries and nine business functions highlights the broad use and significant economic potential of advanced AI techniques.

Measuring —and delivering— what consumers really want. 

We have identified 30 “elements of value”—fundamental attributes in their most essential and discrete forms. These elements fall into four categories: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact. Some elements are more inwardly focused, primarily addressing consumers’ personal needs. For example, the life-changing element motivation is at the core of Fitbit’s exercise-tracking products. Others are outwardly focused, helping customers interact in or navigate the external world. The functional element organizes is central to The Container Store and Intuit’s TurboTax, because both help consumers deal with complexities in their world.

To help B2B suppliers understand the spectrum of customer priorities, we analyzed scores of quantitative and qualitative customer studies that our firm had conducted for clients over three decades, examining what mattered most to buyers. From this research, we identified 40 fundamental “elements of value.” They fall into five categories: table stakes, functional, ease of doing business, individual, and inspirational.