Today’s retailers are rethinking how they sell at a time in which the retail industry is changing at speed – and many are testing different approaches as they look to work out exactly what it is their customers want. As we report this week, John Lewis and Waitrose are focusing on service and the customer experience, while Morrisons is working ever more closely with Amazon and its other wholesale customers, and the Co-op is testing convenient new ways to deliver the goods to its shoppers.
From our European coverage, we have news of how Mercadona is hiring new IT staff to focus on the cloud and the Internet of Things, while Albert Heijn is taking a fresh approach as it looks to remove tills from its stores. These are all examples of the different directions that an RSA report out this week says retail could go in. It looks at how retailers might move away from the current wave of store closures that are disproportionately affecting female staff and instead develop better jobs that will stand both workers and their employers in good stead for an increasingly multichannel future of retail.
We stay on the theme of finding new ways to serve customers and in today’s IRC 2019 preview, we hear from Pinterest’s Adele Cooper on the role of inspiration in social media in winning new customers. Today’s guest comment comes from Andy Reid of Pitney Bowes, who considers three ways that leading retailers are using their stores to inspire shoppers.
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