European Retail and Luxury
Shoptalk Europe 2017: The Future of Retail is Tech
Last week our European Retail & Luxury teams were at Shoptalk Europe. This inaugural
event featured >220 speakers including established retailers & brands, start ups and
tech companies. Participating companies included: Tesco, Dixons Carphone, Zalando,
Farfetch, MatchesFashion.com, Amazon, eBay & Alibaba. On page 2 we summarise our
key takeaways by sub-sector and from page 8 onwards we share our session notes.
Theme #1: How retailers and brands can drive consumer spend
Personalising the retail experience is at the centre of improving the customer journey:
consumers think in terms of product, not channel, so retailers need to offer a seamless
transition between offline & online and physical stores have to create experiences
which reward in-store visits. Increasing the pace at which customers can locate and
purchase products is a core focus both offline & online. Social platforms are becoming
more important for generating demand and the most effective brands in this area are
already keenly focused on micro-influencers, online communities & Instagram stories.
Theme #2: How business needs to adapt internally to the new world
The hot topic is how to harness Artificial Intelligence to improve conversion. As a prerequisite,
this means: 1) being able to capture and cleanse data to ensure relevance, 2)
having a culture that is prepared to act on the intelligence, and 3) having the human
talent in the business to use the data effectively. Consumer companies are starting to
"think digital" with the technology team dispersed into the normal operational
functions such as buying and merchandising.
Theme #3: Amazon vs. other retailers + Google?
So far it has been the tech giants that have been driving the majority of innovation.
Sub-scale investment by traditional offline retailers, it seems, has left them so far
behind on the innovation curve that catching up could be unrealistic. If Amazon's scale
and tech-led dominance is to be countered then traditional retailers will likely need to
act in partnership with the likes of Google and other providers to access their
technologies. Commentators call for increased data sharing between, and across,
retailers and brands in order to compete in areas such as personalisation and targeted
advertising. The Amazon threat looks set to continue, bringing together previously
unlikely bedfellows.