Retail Reworked – Part 3: The Future of Physical Stores – Four Areas of Opportunity

Executive Summary

This report concludes our three-part Retail Reworked series, which considers changes in spending trends and consumer demand.

As e-commerce skims off ever more purchases—particularly those that are planned, functional in nature or of higher-value products—physical stores can benefit by focusing on one or more of the following propositions:

• Convenience: serving demand for last-minute purchases in local stores.
• Collection: offering in-store pickup of online orders, which can lead to incremental purchases by shoppers who visit stores to collect their orders.
• Discount: serving the shopper base that continues to flock to value-positioned stores operating largely or solely offline, such as off-price stores, grocery discount stores, warehouse clubs and dollar stores/pound shops.
• Destination: creating experience-rich, quality stores and shopping centers that appeal to leisure shoppers.