Retail of the future: what will the next 15 years will bring?

With rapid advancements in technology and ever-evolving customer behaviours, the retail industry is currently going through a massive transformation – one that has not gone unnoticed by popular online-to-offline marketing platform BRIDGE, which works with brands and retail networks to convert digital customer footfall into in-store traffic.

What will customers of the future expect from retailers? How much will brands be led by technology? And will online shopping eventually spell the end for traditional brick-and-mortar stores?

These are questions all retailers are asking today. Based on studies of current trends and developments in the sector, BRIDGE has offered some answers in the form of a thought-provoking infographic, containing predictions for the future of retail – one year, five years, ten years, and fifteen years from now.

There are already visible signs of where the industry is heading, according to BRIDGE. Retail is currently experiencing a technological revolution, ushering in innovations such as ‘digital aisles’, online stock-checking, ‘buy’ features on social media, and the start of product deliveries by drone, all of which are safely predicted to become more common in a year’s time.

In five years, things would start to look very different. Customised, real-time marketing to shoppers and virtual-reality shopping experiences are the big predictions here, with BRIDGE noting how some fashion brands have already started to introduce virtual-reality dressing rooms for their customers. Another expected change is the shrinking in size of physical retail spaces, as the ever-increasing shift to online shopping leads to customers using stores more as pick-up locations for already-ordered products.      

Ten years on, the predictions feel even more sci-fi by today’s standards: interactive in-store maps for customers, payments transacted through facial recognition and iris scans, and ‘buy’ features on social media used on a much larger scale.

Vincent Naigeon, Managing Director of BRIDGE commented: “Would I say that the offline retail is dead? Definitely not, it has had to adapt for sure but digital has formed a critical part of the research process. 'With younger audiences seeking more meaning retailers need to convey the meaning of products with greater clarity or lose them to smaller outlets. Consumer technology is evolving at such a high rate for those bigger retailers it makes sense to create innovation teams so that they can rapidly prototype and test.”

Fifteen years from now? Here, things become more difficult to predict. However, BRIDGE expects certain developments to be inevitable, such as ‘smart’ homes and appliances on a mass scale, products being 3D printed from home, and a wide array of options for customers to instantly ‘order what they see’ on media channels.

It is a fascinating, and compelling, picture of things to come in the world of retail, with BRIDGE highlighting the need for brands to be more innovative in their marketing tactics today in order to stay competitive – or even relevant – in the years to come.  

Naigeon added: “The digital and physical world continue to grow closer together, retailers that can harness technology that blurs those lines will succeed in capturing consumers attention. Integrating social experiences into retail will be of high importance in the coming years as testimonials, reviews and referrals take on even more importance.

“Data is one of the most powerful tools retailers have, I would expect to see this being used more effectively to drive revenues with targeting down to an individual level.”

You can find more from Bridge here.