What: A review of the major areas where retailers are forced to innovate in the coming months and years.

Why it is important:  WWD identifies 3 areas: social and digital marketing and sales processes, omnichannel capabilities and, interestingly, sustainability. We also believe at IADS that our role is to expose our members to innovative solutions in each of these topics, which is the reason why we will be creating a new channel dedicated to this topic in the future.

In the past, innovation used to be a topic on the desk of every CEO, but not considered as critical for surviving. After all, despite various disruptive announcements and new practices coming from the likes of Amazon or Apple, the playbook and business model en vogue in retail was working well, and for some IADS members, 2019 was even a record year in terms of numbers.

The pandemic radically changed that situation: now, retailers find themselves in a situation of “innovate, or die”, for numerous reasons.

The most obvious reason, after a year of lockdowns all around the world, is obviously the need to reach customers wherever they are, and not assume they will be coming to the store. This implies muscling up the communication capabilities - digital marketing, social media of course – and, in parallel, the selling processes themselves – livestreaming, social commerce -. The need for innovation is even more urgent that all players have now the possibility to improve, thanks to newcomers from the tech world who came up with new solutions, far cheaper than the investments such moves needed in the part (such as Shopify for e-commerce, for instance).

Also, technological innovations will also allow retailers to stay in the omnichannel course, once situation is back to a semi-normal. Customers are now expecting some services and interactions with stores and retailers, and take them for granted: offline/online services such as Buy Online, Pick Up in Store and what it implies in terms of stock unification and logistics, or product data enrichment (facilitated by the use of technologies such as QR codes) and what it implies in terms of product search capabilities.

Finally, another area where innovation is going to be impactful is the sustainability topic. This subject has been left on the side of the road at the peak of the pandemic, but is poised to make a come back once things settle down and customers are back in stores. Optimizing operations to be not only more economically efficient but also sustainably viable will then be not only a differentiating point but a basic expectation from customers.

At Retail, Innovation in High Gear