Retailers as Experience Designers
(5 minute read)
What will shopping in 2030 look like? Here are some predictions from Brian Solis, digital anthropologist, futurist, and global innovation evangelist.
Solis specialises in studying how technology changes markets and behaviours. He reverse engineers trends to help executives and decision makers understand how to get in front of those trends through investing in technology, reimagining business and operating models and changing mindsets.
Solis predicts that the shopping experience in 2030 in the hands of the most visionary and creative retailers, will borrow heavily from consumer experiences in spaces like amusement parks and translate that to a retail store. Virtual and augmented reality, games, and the Disney method of ‘imagineering’ will marry technology with customer experience in ways that create the wow factor.
By 2030, 5G would have given way to 6G. Sensory, computer-mediated sensory awareness, AI, AR, immersive and spatial computing are all expected to be commonplace. Retailers are expected to tap into a new ‘experience architecture’ involving talent borrowed from game and spatial computing designers.
What does this mean for the physical retail store?
Solis suggests that retailers can no longer build fixed structures and rely on a business model that involves squeezing as much returns out of the structure as possible. They will have to think and feel how customers will feel as they move through the space and what they are attracted to beyond what is on the shelves.
The current trend for micro-fulfilment is one that will grow as it frees the shopper of the constraints of ‘stuff’ and encourages them to ‘experience’ things while micro-fulfilment takes care of the practical aspects of shopping and purchasing such as delivery. It changes the dynamic of how a shopper will move through a retail space.
Technology will be more subtle, less intrusive, and more powerful, providing personalisation techniques without feeling intimidating. The thrust of the retail experience will be akin to creating and experiencing ‘magic’.
Costs and Profitability
Obviously all of this comes at a cost. Retailers are just as susceptible to short-termism and the pressures of quarterly revenues. Solis suggests that the future of retail should be envisioned as an investment, not as cost-centre. As consumers learn to become more comfortable with digital shopping and brand experiences, retailers will have to recreate their shopping experiences in a way that makes full use of technologies that will be commonplace in 2030. This also means that retailers will have to attract a variety of talent that will help that create and offer that magic of retail shopping by 2030.
