WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

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.

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.

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.

"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).

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.

While there is evidence that the retail apocalypse is real offline. There are mixed signs about whether online retailing is experiencing a full apocalypse.

Will we be able to create sustainable prosperity, or are we on the way to a climate crash? Is the world interconnected or fragmented? Which new technologies shape our everyday lives? In a new study entitled “Delivering Tomorrow: Logistics in 2050," Deutsche Post DHL Group presents five sweeping, sometimes radical, prospects for the world in 2050 as well as the impact they would have on the logistics industry.

The Alexa voice platform and other deep learning projects have made Amazon an AI leader.

In this practical guide, you'll learn:

• The Pros / Cons of Different Pricing Policy Types including MAP (Minimum Acceptable Pricing) and UPP (Unilateral Pricing Policies)
• The Top Mistakes people make drafting their policies that can land them in legal trouble and tips from legal experts to avoid them
• How to determine the size of your branding problem and detect violations in Amazon and other Websites and Online Marketplaces
• Ways to automate enforcement
• Get practical advice from the pros

Taiwanese e-commerce platform OwlTing wants to change the way consumers think about their food. This year, it launched the world’s first blockchain-based app for tracing food products — including pork. And the process is pretty simple: by scanning a sticker on a slab of pork, OwlTing customers can quickly access information about everything from a piglet’s date of birth, to the vaccines it received before its slaughter. There’s a lot more to blockchain technology than learning obscure facts about a pork chop, however. For producers, using blockchain-based technologies to trace food through processing and shipping means that they might be able to avoid widespread food waste should a contamination arise — and even save lives. And it is not just small companies that are interested in this technology. The largest retailer in the world, Walmart recently partnered with IBM to develop their own pilot blockchain system. VICE News Tonight visited Taiwan to see how blockchain is affecting pork production, and then to Walmart to find out why the company thinks consumers are going to benefit from this technology.

We surveyed eCommerce Managers and CEOs from European countries and prepared the report based on their experiences and our knowledge.

The most anticipated slide deck of the year is here. Key takeaways:

• Global smartphone growth is slowing: Smartphone shipments grew 3 percent year over year last year, versus 10 percent the year before. This is in addition to continued slowing internet growth, which Meeker discussed last year.
• Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. Twenty percent of mobile queries were made via voice in 2016, while accuracy is now about 95 percent.
• In 10 years, Netflix went from 0 to more than 30 percent of home entertainment revenue in the U.S. This is happening while TV viewership continues to decline.
• Entrepreneurs are often fans of gaming, Meeker said, quoting Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg. Global interactive gaming is becoming mainstream, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Global gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the top market for interactive gaming.
• China remains a fascinating market, with huge growth in mobile services and payments and services like on-demand bike sharing. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's China slides.)
• While internet growth is slowing globally, that’s not the case in India, the fastest growing large economy. The number of internet users in India grew more than 28 percent in 2016. That’s only 27 percent online penetration, which means there’s lots of room for internet usership to grow. Mobile internet usage is growing as the cost of bandwidth declines. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's India slides.)
• In the U.S. in 2016, 60 percent of the most highly valued tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation Americans and are responsible for 1.5 million employees. Those companies include tech titans Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook.
• Healthcare: Wearables are gaining adoption with about 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Leading tech brands are well-positioned in the digital health market, with 60 percent of consumers willing to share their health data with the likes of Google in 2016.

The startups in this infographic have raised nearly $1.5B to optimize grocery store operations with AI, virtual reality and more.

China tops the US as home to the most e-commerce companies with funding over $100M.

Seattle-based Amazon is doubling down on AWS and its AI assistant, Alexa. It's seeking to become the central provider for AI-as-a-service.

There have been more retail bankruptcies so far this year than all of 2016. The number of retailers filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is approaching its highest level since 2008 and 2009.
Why now? Many point to the rise of Amazon and e-commerce, the glut of malls and a spending shift from clothes to health care and experiences. All of these trends hold true, but they've been building for a while now.

The Future of Personalization white paper looks at how retailers can deliver a more personalized, one-on-one online shopping experience. Specifically, the paper looks at the retail landscape and the challenges retailers must overcome in order to achieve personalization, such as understanding the individual consumer, including their style, size and brand affinities as well as external and internal factors that affect their decision making.

Starbucks is facing long lines and delays in stores, and the CEO hasn't offered any specific solutions for restoring service.

This year’s forecasts will highlight the trends & issues that we think will have major impacts on the retail industry over the coming 12 months.

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution isn’t around the corner—it’s here. A common remark is that as soon as some new form of AI is possible, it’s no longer AI, it’s just what computers “do”. And while we won’t notice most of AI’s effects in our world, there will be visible signs as digital technology is infused with AI. Through the lens of commerce, it’s easier to see AI’s deep effects as progress continues. Here are a few examples.

This transformation echoes the impact of Facebook on the media: there is a dramatic leveling of the playing field. The advantages of scale that guaranteed success in the post-war era just don’t matter very much when advertising is cheap, shelf space is infinite, and shipping is free. And, just as Facebook’s breakdown of the media broke down the political parties, Amazon’s break-down of physical retail will have its own knock-on effects: carrying household supplies is a major reason to own a car, for example, which means Amazon is a laying the foundation for a service like Uber to shift from being a car supplement to a full-on substitution.