The Future of Shopping

In the near future it will be possible to set up a videoconference with your personal concierge to look at some dresses or other clothing on an avatar of yourself. While doing so you can easily change the dresses and if you see one you like compare prices and reviews and order the one you like most. Than you will drive to the nearest store to try on the items you just ordered. When doing so you can upload a video to your closest friends who then can give their opinion. This all will be possible within a few years.

Almost every 50 years there will be a big change in world of retail. Consecutively the following changes appeared in the last 150 years: growth of big cities and the rise of railroad networks which made the modern department store as we know it now possible. Almost 50 years later the automobiles came and then the rise of departments with specialty retailers set in. During the 60’s and 70’s the discount departments came up such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Over the years the changes did not eliminate the older phenomenon, but it reshaped the environment in which the retailers and customers were acting.

Like every other change, it did come with ups and downs. In the 90’s, a lot of retailers started online shopping. However a combination of bad strategies, bad speculation on the exchange market and a slow economy lead to the dot.com bubble to burst. Today however, that economy is stable and growing. Digital retailing is evolving very quickly that it requires a new name: omnichannel retailing. The name is chosen because the retailers can use countless channels to interact with customers. Merchants who do not use these new perspectives will likely be swept away. Because the omnichannel-way of retailing is what the customer is demanding.

The advantages of digital retailing are increasing such as the innovations of technology on the market. A lot of stores work with payments with smartphones or tablets. But there is a group of retailers that do not want to switch to the more modern way of selling products today. The main reason for this, is that they do not understand this. But that isn’t the only reason. The dotcom-bubble is also one, the threatening of closing physical stores and thereby loses jobs, the only focus is profit margin and the final reason is that they did not have success with other innovations.

To change this, the first thing that needs to be done is accept that there is a change in the world of retailing. The second thing is to change the strategy of the company. The retailers must ask their selves if it is really necessary to open new physical stores, when 20% of the products are ordered