The future of Retail under moonlight

Wow, last night’s segment on Nightlife with Tony Delroy on ABC Local radio was a hoot.

We stripped back the hype, doom and gloom to take a look under the hood to see what is really going on with retail to discover that we are living through an evolutionary phase, like many industry’s across our planet, in which new elements of purchasing and retailing are emerging such as online, and as we transition through this we are experiencing the usual change mentality of “in my day this would never have happened” and “the world as we know it, is over”.

We will have casualties in this journey and nothing good can be made of that, but we will also have new heroes and experiences come out of it and in a few years this brave new retail / consumer world that we are building will seem ordinary and the way we used to shop will be another folk story we tell our children.

Online retail, even in the most ambitious statistics, is set to only account for about 15% of all retail purchases in the next 10 years, this leaves much buying and selling to be done in a physical store and in this newish world, the physical store will still account for the majority of retail experiences, but within that store there will be totally new expectations and interactions.

We are currently taking our first tentative steps into this new retail experience with mobile device apps, QR (quick response codes), NFC (near field technology) and in store technology such as magic mirrors.

Consumers will come laden with these new technologies, at first in their mobile devices and then beyond into other devices and discreet objects they carry on or with them as well as new in-store technologies. They also come laden with information, insights and prejudices provided by their online social networking tribe.

We are also seeing crowdsourcing websites such as groupon, scoopon, catch of the day and many others that have an initial flurry of excitement and success and are now having to rebuild their business models and broaden their offerings for long-term sustainability.

We also put shopping into context to see it as an 8 stages process, only one of which is the actual purchase, and that it is the way the consumer travels through these stages, using a blend of traditional and virtual engagement, that is changing.

We also chatted about the changing consumer, consumption patterns, global / national / local markets, bespoke and hyper-personalised purchasing.

A tonne of interest and great questions from our many call in listeners, so all in all a great interview and well worth a listen if you want to make sense of what lies ahead in retail (47 minutes):

Science fiction coming to life

Flying cars was where Phoebe and I started this radio Sydney ABC Local radio conversation, but we quickly got talking about how many science fiction dreams have turned into reality with a look at the movies and books that inspired the iPad, iPhone, water-bed, robots, video chats, ear buds and more.

So listen in to see where some of our everyday tech gadgets started their lives.

2012′s rising industries

This week Jason Jordan of 6PR Perth and I take a look as IBIS World’s annual predictions of the top industries which this year include diamond and gemstone mining, motor vehicle manufacturing, online education, biotechnology and online shopping.

Have a listen now:

and join us each Sunday at 5.05 p.m. (WST)

The evolution and revolution of retail

Retail is going through an evolution on the back of a revolution.

In line with the rest of the planet and on the back of the internet, retail is going through its awkward teenager like years full of pimples, self doubt and uncertainty about tomorrow and what may be ahead.

Like a typical prepubescent the 10 years prior to the economic downturn many retailers were full of self importance, saw themselves as invincible and the centre of attention.

Come the economic downturn, consumers had less to spend and became very determined to spend it wisely.

The days of spending excess are in hiatus. Retailers have to work hard now to prove their worthiness to us and many couldn’t and can’t.

Mixed into this backdrop is the evolution of online shopping; the growing number of online shopping business models, sites and opportunities and hey presto we have a new retail environment growing out of the virtual ground.

These two factors, what’s in it for the consumer and what retail might evolve into are the topic for this weeks discussion between ABC Radio Australia’s Adelaine Ng and myself as we explore the evolution and revolution of retail.

Listen now:

You can believe your eyes…

Zombie games players, bank ATM’s, cafes, road signs, train timetables and pictures of friends all flash before your eyes as you walk around your local suburb. No you haven’t gone completely mad, instead you’re using one of the newer kids on the technology block – augmented reality.

Jason Jordan of Perth radio’s 6PR and I chatted this week about turning your smartphones camera into a set of binoculars and pairing it with an app that let’s you find physical locations and people and then be guided on screen right to them.

These kinds of augmented reality apps together with the ability for our mobile technology to know exactly where we are on the planet (aka Geo-Aware) are also showing up in our cars as heads up displays, are being used by surgeons to guide them skillfully through the human body and by the armed forces to walk them confidently through hostile foreign terrains.

Listen to this week’s segment now to see how augmented and virtual reality apps using geoaware smartness are all a part of your mobile future.

and listen live each week at 4.40 p.m. (WST)

The Future of Shopping – ABC Overnight with Rod Quinn

Tomorrow’s retail experience is evolving into new places, new services, new thinking and new opportunities, but it’s not just online ‘cos that only accounts for 3% of our total shopping moving up to 7% in the next few years.

Physical bricks and mortar shops are not going to disappear, but they too will need to evolve to thrive.

On line shopping clubs are also springing up everywhere and for listeners looking for these click here to get a list of some of the online clubs and retailers.

This, listeners questions and so much more were all part of this morning’s discussion between ABC Radio’s Overnight presenter Rod Quinn and Morris Miselowski as we talked our way through the brave new world’s of retail.

Listen now

Everything new is old again – CBS BTalk

In today’s podcast Phil Dobbie of CBS’s BTalk and I looks at ten things that will change our lives and businesses this year:

Hyper-personalisation
More social media
More working together
Mobile devices as personal assistants
Our mobile device will tell us more about what’s going on
More apps
Social business
Everything on the go
Pictures, worth a thousand words
More innovation than ever before

Listen now

Did the internet kill Borders Bookstores?

This question I have been most often asked in the last week is whether online retailing killed Angus and Robertson and Borders and the simple answer is, no.

It possibly played a part in its demise, but it can not be blamed for it when there are a myriad of other factors that occurred.

Michael Veitch of ABC radio and I chat our way through this issue trying to make sense of what other factors may have been involved and what the future of bookstores and bricks and mortar retailing may be.

Listen now

The Future of Retail – ABC Radio Local – Nightlife – Monday 17th January

Tomorrow’s retail is decidedly different from what we have been used to. The first large format supermarket in Australia launched in the early 1960′s and caused a revolution and an outcry as we questioned what it meant for the local milk bar and strip shopping centres. Fifty years on, replace supermarkets with online shopping and you have the same debate raging.

Leon Compton of ABC radio local’s Nightline program and I take a look at what’s ahead in retail.

Will the rise of online retailing herald the demise of physical stores? How will we be shopping online? How will we be shopping in physical stores? What part will our mobile computers play in the retail experience? What might bricks and mortar retail stores need to do if they are going to survive? and what’s ahead on the Australian retail horizon.

This, plus caller questions and more, make up this lively and far reaching on-air tour into the future of retail.

Listen now

Cheap is the new chic – what’s in store for 2011

Herald Sun Wednesday 5th January 2011 Page 17

In this morning’s Herald Sun me and 4 fellow futurists talked about what we saw ahead for 2011 and what we believe is on the way up and what’s on the way down.

I’m not sure how my down list included plastic surgery, but the others all sound like stuff I said.

The other striking thing for me is the underlying sense of austerity and negativity that the others believe we are heading into – you know that’s never the way I roll.

I have seen and experienced too many examples of people achieving extraordinary things regardless what the rest of the marketplace was doing or feeling and likewise seen people fail when everyone else around them prospers.

Optimism and good fortune are not gained through lottery prizes or luck, nor are they set by prevailing market conditions; they are won by hard work and a continual dogged focus on what your future has to be, with you living it out right now, as if your future were already your past.

The skill with reading this and all other lists is to find your breadcrumb innovation, the ideas and ah-ha moments that lets you see an opportunity, where all others seem to be blind.

Anyway here’s to an incredible 2011, may it overflow with Breadcrumb innovations and exceed your wildest expectations of it.