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The Future of Retailing

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Retailers have embraced a variety of technologies to engage their customers. This article focuses on " The Future of Retailing " by highlighting five key areas that are moving the field forward: (1) technology and tools to facilitate decision making, (2) visual display and merchandise offer decisions, (3) consumption and engagement, (4) big data collection and usage, and (5) analytics and profitability. We also suggest numerous issues that are deserving of additional inquiry, as well as introduce important areas of emerging applicability: the internet of things, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robots, drones, and driverless vehicles.
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The Future of Retailing
Dhruv Grewal a,, Anne L. Roggeveen a, Jens Nordfältb
aBabson College, Babson Park, MA 02457, United States
bStockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract
Retailers have embraced a variety of technologies to engage their customers. This article focuses on “The Future of Retailing” by highlighting
ve key areas that are moving the eld forward: (1) technology and tools to facilitate decision making, (2) visual display and merchandise offer
decisions, (3) consumption and engagement, (4) big data collection and usage, and (5) analytics and protability. We also suggest numerous
issues that are deserving of additional inquiry, as well as introduce important areas of emerging applicability: the internet of things, virtual reality,
augmented reality, articial intelligence, robots, drones, and driverless vehicles.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of New York University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Retailing; Futuristic view; Strategy
In the rapidly evolving retail landscape, consumers’ needs
still drive their purchase decisions. Shoppers make most con-
sumption decisions, yet newer technologies (e.g., Internet of
things, robots), newer business models (e.g., subscription mod-
els), and big data/predictive analytics suggest that the shopping
process is on the verge of a quantum leap into an unknown shop-
ping realm. The result is a powerful need to understand critical
retailing areas in which innovations are changing the game, so
that we can better understand where the retailing eld will be
evolving in the future.
In modern, multifaceted, omnichannel environments, con-
sumers are bombarded with information about goods and
services. Retailers that can connect with their customers by pro-
viding targeted information and offering value stand apart and
have the potential to create deep customer engagement. Technol-
ogy can help retailers target appropriate consumers; technology
also enables consumers to make better informed decisions about
which products or services to consume. Yet not all consumer
As the editors of this Special Issue, we are grateful to the reviewers of all the
papers in this issue, as well as the guidance provided by the Journal of Retailing
co-editors. The reviewers are acknowledged on a dedicated page of this issue.
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: dgrewal@babson.edu (D. Grewal),
aroggeveen@babson.edu (A.L. Roggeveen), Jens.Nordfalt@hhs.se
(J. Nordfält).
decisions rely on extensive information searches and detailed
decision processes. Some decisions are spontaneous, produced
quickly while shopping online or in stores, often prompted
by strategic visual presentations and merchandise assortments
crafted by the retailer.
A purchase provides the retailer a multitude of disparate infor-
mation, including transactional data (e.g., price paid, quantity
purchased, shopping basket composition), consumer data (e.g.,
gender, age, family composition), and environmental data (e.g.,
temperature). Retailers that can draw effective insights from
big data can make better predictions about consumer behav-
ior, design more appealing offers, better target their customers,
and develop tools that encourage consumers to make purchase
decisions that favor their products. Thus, big data can initi-
ate benecial, cyclical processes of consumer consumption and
engagement that in turn lead to enhanced protability.
This special issue of the Journal of Retailing explores ve
key topic areas: (1) technology and tools to facilitate decision
making, (2) visual displays and merchandise offers decisions,
(3) consumption and engagement, (4) big data collection and
usage, and (5) analytics and protability. This paper introduces
these areas by integrating the insights provided in the articles
contained in this special issue. Fig. 1 provides a visual overview
of these topics.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2016.12.008
0022-4359/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of New York University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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Fig. 1. Organizing framework.
Technology & Tools to Facilitate Decision Making
Technological change continues to be a game changer for
retailing that can simultaneously benet consumers and retail-
ers. For example, technology enables consumers to make more
informed decisions, receive more targeted and benecial offers,
and obtain faster service. It also assists retailers in reaching
appropriate consumers at lower costs, due to technologically
created efciencies. Inman and Nikolova (2017) draw attention
to how technologies can benet both consumers and businesses,
which ultimately enhance the businesses’ protability. They
highlight mobile apps, scan-and-go technologies, self-check-
outs, QueVision, and smart shelf technology. For example,
self-check-out technology helps shoppers scan, bag, and pay for
products without any need to interact with a cashier. Customers
thus gain control; retailers enjoy reduced labor costs from the
fewer number of cashiers required. QueVision gives retailers
insights into how many registers are needed and the expected
wait times, using data garnered from infrared sensors over store
doors and cash registers, predictive analytics, and real-time data
feeds from point-of-sale systems. Using this technology, grocery
retailers have been able to reduced wait times from more than
4 min to less than 30s. Thus, QueVision improves the customer
experience, through shorter wait times, and benets the rm in
the form of happier, less stressed employees.
The introduction of smartphones have revolutionized shop-
ping. From mobile apps, to geo-fenced targeted offers, to
constant access to the online environment, the advances in this
realm have led to constantly changing consumer expectations
and to retailers’ enhanced ability to connect with consumers.
Scan-and-go technologies allow customers to use their smart-
phones to scan items as they shop, then use the retailer’s app to
pay. Amazon is pushing this innovation even further, removing
the need for consumers to scan items, through their Amazon Go
technology. Amazon Go allows customers to scan their smart-
phone as they enter the store, pick up the products they want,
and leave. Computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning
technologies automatically detect when products are taken from
or returned to shelves and keep track of items in a virtual cart.
After consumers leave the store, they are charged and sent an
automatic receipt. All customers need is a smartphone, an Ama-
zon account, and the Amazon Go app (Amazon 2016). These
new technologies are revolutionizing the consumer shopping
experience and will set new expectations of what shopping can
or should be in the future.
Mobile technology also allows retailers to offer relevant
offers that reect locational information (e.g., time of day,
weather, location), using location-based applications (e.g.,
Google maps) (Grewal et al. 2016). For example, feel-good
products can be promoted effectively when the weather is bad
(Rosman 2013). Similarly, mobile promotions can take advan-
tage of indoor positioning information gathered using iBeacons
in order to offer location relevant promotions.
Personalizing technologies to make them user specic clearly
has benets for both consumers and retailers. However, a
personalization–privacy paradox warrants consideration. Per-
sonalizing information for customers can both enhance and
diminish consumer engagement with the rm, because con-
sumers may recognize how much data and information retailers
have about them and begin worry about their privacy. Retailers
therefore need to be careful to use their knowledge about cus-
tomers in a way that balances out this personalization–privacy
paradox (Aguirre et al. 2015).
We question whether these new technologies will affect all
types of retailing and all types of shoppers in the same way.
Retailers use their apps to deliver a variety of promotions; per-
haps these apps would be especially useful for retailers that adopt
high–low pricing strategies or discount retailers. Alternatively,
perhaps retailer apps are primarily good for reaching deal-prone
customers. Another consideration pertains to the store, such that
small stores could serve as delivery/pick-up points for online
retailers, or they might focus more on meeting shoppers’ social
needs (Magi 2003), in that social shoppers are overrepresented
in smaller store formats.
Visual Display & Merchandise Offer Decisions
Today’s consumers are bombarded with merchandise and
offers. The question is how to design and deliver offers that stand
out. Understanding this can help retailers decide how, when, and
where to display merchandise (and associated offers), accord-
ing to the channel format (in store or online). Manufacturers also
recognize the importance of ensuring that consumers pay atten-
tion to their merchandise and offers, such that they seek ways to
make their merchandise stand out from the competition on the
shelf or online.
Kahn (2017) highlights the need for manufacturers and retail-
ers to account for a “visual salience bias” and make assortments
easier for consumers to process. She recommends several key
strategies for doing so, such as reducing the size of the assort-
ment presented, reducing information intensity, making sure
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each item relates to the assortment context, and carefully think-
ing through the spatial positioning of merchandise.
Further evidence on the role of spatial orientation of mer-
chandise presentation is provided by Nordfält et al. (2014). They
examine the importance of the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal
orientation of merchandise. Their results demonstrate the supe-
riority of a vertical organization of merchandise (e.g., vertical
arrays of multiple beverages in a cold case result in more pur-
chases than the same beverages in a horizontal display). Vertical
displays of towels, versus a diagonal display, resulted in a more
than 90% increase in product pick-ups by customers.
In addition to their organization on the shelf, on the display,
or on the website, product packages are an important aspect
of the visual scenery. Kahn (2017) highlights the importance
of various visual components, such as where an image appears
on a product package and the shape of that package. Investiga-
tions of packaging typically take a shape or design perspective,
but Krishna, Cian, and Aydinoglu (2017) propose extending
this view to determine how the different layers of a package
might affect consumer shopping engagement. The packaging
and product thus consists of three hierarchical levels: the inner
core, which is the product itself (e.g., pill, piece of chocolate);
an intermediate level that consists of the container (e.g., bot-
tle for pills, wrapper that holds chocolate); and an outer layer,
which is what is immediately evident to consumers prior to their
purchase (e.g., carton that contains the bottle that contains the
pill; fancy box that holds all the chocolates). These authors cite
the importance of understanding the roles of these three differ-
ent layers, across both a physicality dimension and a functional
dimension. That is, packaging levels exert a signicant inuence
on consumers’ sensory experiences. Certain packages facilitate
consumers’ ability to examine the product visually or physically,
such as clear packaging that allows customers to engage visu-
ally with a product. Packages that do not cover the entire product
also enable customers to feel the texture of the materials. Thus,
package types can have signicant inuences on how consumers
consciously and subconsciously engage with products.
Packaging also might affect consumers’ perceptions and con-
sumption decisions. A package can set consumer expectations
about the amount of product; for example, a perfume may take
up only ten percent of the outer package, and the intermediate
glass bottle would account for 40% of the outer box. In this
high-end category, the smaller volume drives scarcity expecta-
tions, associated with these luxury, high priced products. Visual
and spatial components of the packaging, in conjunction with
other sensory dimensions (Spence et al. 2014), thus establish
customers’ expectations and their consumption experience.
As part of their visual merchandising efforts, retailers must
consider locational effects for their merchandise and their
sales promotions, both online and in stores. Recent research
demonstrates that the location of the sale price in displays
and communications online can have considerable impacts. For
example, Biswas et al. (2013) reveal that the sale price is more
effective when it is to the right of a higher advertised reference
price rather than placed to the left. Suri et al. (2017) similarly
nd that when the price is portrayed to the right of the pack-
age, it is more effective for increasing purchase intentions and
purchases of lower involvement products (e.g., beverages) than
when it is on the left.
Consumption & Engagement
Consumers’ actual consumption of goods and services is
at the heart of all retailing. Designing goods that offer value
to consumers is critical to success of retailers and service
providers. Creating a superior customer experience can differen-
tiate companies (Grewal, Levy, and Kumar 2009;Verhoef et al.
2009). This holistic customer experience concept “involves the
customer’s cognitive, affective, emotional, social and physical
responses to the retailer. This experience is created not only by
those elements which the retailer can control (e.g., service inter-
face, retail atmosphere, assortment, price), but also by elements
that are outside of the retailer’s control (e.g., inuence of others,
purpose of shopping)” (Verhoef et al. 2009, p. 32).
Firms already acknowledge the importance of understand-
ing and managing customer experience and engagement levels
(Accenture 2015; Marketing Science Institute 2016), as do aca-
demics (e.g., Grewal, Levy, and Kumar 2009;Lemon and Vehoef
2016; Puccinelli et al. 2009; Verhoef et al. 2009). However,
no in-depth research has probed ways to enhance customers’
sense of engagement. Grewal et al. (2017) present a hierarchal
model of customer engagement that suggests that incorporating
consciousness may facilitate such enhancements.
To develop this model, Grewal et al. (2017) draw on research
into conscious capitalism (Mackey and Sisodia 2014)asthe
grounding principles. These principles include incorporating a
higher purpose and values to center the mission of the company;
having strong leadership that imbues the corporate culture with a
team-oriented approach to fullling the company’s purpose and
values; and striving for an integrative stakeholder orientation.
Building on those foundations, Grewal et al. (2017) argue that
for a hierarchical, three-level approach to enhancing customer
engagement that reects the customer experience, an emotional
connection, and a shared identity. Conscious retailers thus cre-
ate deeper emotional connections with customers by leveraging
their purposes and values. At the highest levels of engagement,
customers even come to identify with the retailer.
Another way for retailers to improve a customer experience
that leads to greater engagement is by leveraging social media.
Roggeveen and Grewal (2016) suggest that ve effects drive
consumers to engage with social media: connected, network,
information, dynamic, and timeliness effects. The connected
effect is based on the innate need that people have to connect
with others; social media has changed the format of these rela-
tionships. The network effect refers to an ability to relate to and
broadcast information to others.
Yet, another driver of social media engagement is con-
venience or timeliness. Consumers can constantly access
information, due to the ubiquitous presence of smartphones and
tablets and their dedicated apps. Apps then produce another
driver of social media engagement for retailers, namely, the abil-
ity to provide relevant information and participate in dynamic
conversations with customers. These information and dynamic
effect factors also enhance consumers’ desire to engage with
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their extended social network. Understanding how these various
spokes turn the wheel of social media engagement is another way
that retailers can enhance their engagement with consumers.
Of course, the consumer experience also depends on the
retailer’s category. For example, food retailers may engage with
customers to promote healthier eating. Wansink (2017) provides
a useful, important retail intervention framework that highlights
three major components for enhancing customer engagement in
the domain of food retailing: the role of signage, the structure of
the store/merchandise placement, and the service provided by
employees or electronic aids. All three components inuence
which merchandise is most convenient to purchase, attractive,
and viewed as more normative. Wansink (2017) also suggests
innovative tools and techniques for leveraging signage and ser-
vice components to make healthier products more convenient,
accessible, and normative to purchase. In a sense, increasing
engagement with healthier products ultimately results in health-
ier consumers.
Similarly, retailers must consider how to best engage cus-
tomers online or in stores using visual cues contained within
digital displays (Roggeveen, Nordfält, and Grewal 2016)or
dynamic messages (Roggeveen et al. 2015). Dynamic messages
(e.g., videos), as opposed to static ones (e.g., pictures), help
mentally transport customers into the experience, which cre-
ates a stronger emotional connection, which in turn reduces
customers’ price sensitivity and enhances their consumption of
more hedonic options (Roggeveen et al. 2015).
Substantial existing research focuses on the customer experi-
ence already (e.g., Grewal, Levy, and Kumar 2009;Lemon and
Vehoef 2016; Puccinelli et al. 2009; Verhoef et al. 2009). Future
research should focus on employee engagement. For retailers,
employee engagement could result in greater consumer engage-
ment. Verhoef et al. (2009) highlight the need to understand the
role of dynamic experiences and how experiences and engage-
ment levels evolve over time.
Big Data Collection & Usage
Retailers have always been inundated with data. In the recent
years, they increasingly have started to take advantage of options
for organizing these data better, improved access to computing
power, and the availability of proprietary or enterprise analytical
systems. The power of big data, coupled with effective analytical
systems, permits retailers to manage a host of issues. Bradlow
et al. (2017) organize the various sources of retail data, includ-
ing those captured from enterprise systems; customer/household
information captured from loyalty, website, or social data; and
locational-based details gathered using mobile and apps. These
authors discuss the dimensions of big data in terms of the cus-
tomer, product, location, time, and channel, highlighting how
retailers can use these data strategically to optimize prices and
maximize sales.
Thus, big data are helping retailers and researchers under-
stand customer behavior. Their emergence has led researchers
to undertake eld studies and experiments that provide clearer
assessments of the causality between an exogenous or indepen-
dent variable (e.g., promoted price, display location, assortment
expansions, service responses) and a host of dependent variables,
from increased store sales and protability to brand switching.
Retailers can rely on survey-based measures, such as purchase
intentions or positive evaluations, to generate greater engage-
ment, loyalty, and prots.
Analytics & Protability
Kumar, Anand, and Song (2017) highlight the importance
of carefully developed, thought-through retail strategies supple-
mented with analytics. They also link these strategies to retail
protability. Such strategies can be explicated at four levels: mar-
ket, rm, store, and customer. For example, at the store level,
these authors highlight what we know about strategies asso-
ciated with marketing mix location and atmospherics, and then
specify topics that need further exploration. In addition, they lay
out actions that need to be undertaken to execute these strate-
gies. As an illustration, at the store level, key executional actions
include personalized pricing, dynamic pricing, mobile targeting,
and technology to improve customer experiences.
In addition, retailers should carefully develop and manage
their vendor relationships. Ailawadi and Farris (2017) highlight
important issues that retailers wrestle with as they move toward
and manage multi- and omnichannel distribution operations.
There are clear benets to an omnichannel distributional struc-
ture from a consumer’s point of view, ranging from transparency
to uniform policies. However, for retailers and suppliers, such
forms of distribution pose unique challenges. To understand the
challenges and the important questions they raise, Ailawadi and
Farris (2017) specify some key insights from academic research
as it pertains to the focal metrics being used in practice, in terms
of the depth and breadth of distribution.
The Further Future of Retailing
Retail is evolving at an accelerated rate due to changes made
possible by technologies and evolving consumer behaviors. Inte-
grating channels and the power of big data are not distinctive
factors anymore but rather are prerequisites of competitive-
ness. Where the eld goes will depend on even newer emerging
forces: The Internet of things, virtual or augmented reality, arti-
cial intelligence, and robots/drones/driverless vehicles (Deloitte
2016).
Research into the Internet of things should clarify how it
may inuence shopping behavior, as well as the role of front-
line employees (Rafaeli et al. 2017). Smart homes are being
designed with a host of smart appliances (e.g., refrigerators)
that can reorder products as stocks get low. Similarly, smart cars
convey relevant information to service departments and may
schedule future service appointments. Thus, research needs to
explore whether the Internet of things will increase consumers’
engagement with retailers, service providers, and brands or if it
will reduce consumer engagement, as machines take over all the
“talking” to other machines (i.e., the start of machine-to-machine
commerce).
Virtual and augmented reality has offered vast promise for a
long time; those promises are just beginning to be realized. The
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new forms of technology-based reality and applications enhance
sensory perceptions (Poncin and Mimoun 2014). For example,
fashion retailers use new technology to help customers engage
in virtual fashion shows (Deloitte 2016). Apps using augmented
reality also are advancing the reality, such as apps for car dealers
that allow consumers to view how different components look on
a car, or games such as Pokémon GO that combine a hunt for
virtual creatures (Pokémon) with the real-world locations of the
players. A mobile device’s GPS capability makes this possible.
Apps that rely on articial intelligence (AI) also are on the
rise in a variety of contexts, from Siri on the Apple phone, to Cor-
tana on Microsoft, to Alexa on Amazon’s Echo, to query-based
response AI systems for retailers (e.g., Macy’s On Call). These
AI-based responses can have tremendous positive impact on cus-
tomers as they shop, whether physically or online. They can
gather information about where products are physically located
within a store, answer questions about the functionalities of a
product, and make suggestions about what other products might
work well in combination with the purchased item. The answers
also may be tailored, according to the consumer’s knowledge
(e.g., accessing historical customer data sets and using predictive
analytics to recommend relevant information or products). The
consequences could include more informed and engaged cus-
tomers, but they also might mean that service employees’ jobs
would need to be retooled to enable them to provide information
at an even higher level than available in an AI application.
Building on AI-based technology, many companies are test-
ing driverless vehicles, and various manufacturers and retailers
are taking advantage of advances in the technology for robotics
and drones (Van Doorn et al. 2017). Major manufacturers and
retailers already use robots extensively in their distribution cen-
ters. Amazon also has publicly discussed its plans for drone
delivery, to augment its existing delivery options. Such applica-
tions suggest a host of research possibilities, such that studies
should pursue a better understanding of the short- and long-term
benets and consequences of different delivery methods.
In conclusion, newer forces will inuence how shoppers
select channels, choose products and services, and make pur-
chases. The worlds of online and ofine are converging.
Knowing what is different and what is similar in these two
worlds, as well as how new technologies are going to impact
both, is key for the future of retailing. Innovations are likely to
help customers make good decisions, feel less time pressure, or
even increase their condence and satisfaction with their deci-
sions. Retailers in turn need to embrace these new and emerging
technologies to make their customers even more engaged, while
also making their lives simpler. Finding ways to do so remains
an important area of inquiry, worthy of continued exploration.
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Wheel of Social Media Engagement,” Journal of Consumer Marketing, 33
(2) (editorial).
Please cite this article in press as: Grewal, Dhruv, et al, The Future of Retailing, Journal of Retailing (xxx, 2016),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2016.12.008
ARTICLE IN PRESS
+Model
RETAIL-626; No. of Pages 6
6D. Grewal et al. / Journal of Retailing xxx (xxx, 2016) xxx–xxx
Roggeveen, Anne L., Dhruv Grewal,Claudia Townsend and R. Krishnan (2015),
“The Impact of Dynamic Presentation Format on Consumer Preferences
for Hedonic Products and Services,” Journal of Marketing, 79 (November),
34–49.
Roggeveen, Anne L., Jens Nordfält and Dhruv Grewal (2016), “Do Digital Dis-
plays Enhance Sales? Role of Retail Format and Message Content,” Journal
of Retailing, 92 (March), 122–31.
Rosman, Katherine (2013), “Weather Channel Now Also Forecasts What You’ll
Buy,The Wall Street Journal,, (August 14, http://www.wsj.com/)
Spence, Charles, Nancy M. Puccinelli, Dhruv Grewal and Anne L. Roggeveen
(2014), “Store Atmospherics: A Multisensory Perspective,Psychology &
Marketing, 31 (July), 472–88.
Suri, Raj, Anne L. Roggeveen, Nancy M. Puccinelli, and Dhruv Grewal (2017).
“Should Prices be Placed in the Left-Visual Field or the Right-Visual Field?”
Working Paper.
Van Doorn, Jenny, Martin Mende, Stephanie M. Noble, John Hulland, Amy
L. Ostrom, Dhruv Grewal and J. Andrew Petersen (2017), “Domo Arigato
Mr. Roboto: The Emergence of Automated Social Presence in Customers’
Service Experiences,” Journal of Services Research,, (forthcoming).
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Tsiros and Leonard Schlesinger (2009), “Customer Experience Creation:
Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies,” Journal of Retailing,
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issue).
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