The Future of Retail in the New World

It's not just e-commerce, convenience and new experiences that are changing retail, it's the advent of the internet of things.

Devices like Amazon echo are changing the rules not just of how we shop, but how we discover products and search for items.

We're entering an era of unprecedented shared intelligence, mobile purchasing combined with a decline of disposable income.

The bifurcation of our lives in terms of entertainment, consumer fulfillment and instant mobile gratification means we're creating demand for new kinds of experiences both in terms of e-commerce and in our in-store shopping lives.

The Algorithm of Choice

There, a decline of friction in the future of shopping is leading to former big-box retail giants going bankrupt. This is also to the detriment of small businesses and local retailers, for capitalistic giants like how Amazon will impact and take over brick-and-mortar retail as we are seeing with unprecedented levels of store closures. Capitalism doesn't care about the human cost, everything old is not new again.

The world of brand discovery, product hunting and buying itself has now been relegated to the purity and personalization of algorithms and dynamic pricing beyond our own understanding. As brands like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target learn to compete with Amazon in the realm of e-commerce, Amazon itself will soon take on brick-and-mortar retail by increasingly opening up different kinds of stores.

In the new retail marketplace, all powerful customer reviews dare us to buy impulsively and take risks in a game of the ultimate levels of convenience, personalization and analytics that know our preferences better than ever. In the great decline of foot traffic in physical retail, a new retail is taking its place. Amazon and Alibaba are showing YOY growth that is disrupting the world of retail globally.

The Disruption of Search

The way we search for products is changing forever, and this means Amazon can become an advertising giant as well. With a relative breakthrough in voice recognition in 2017, we're entering a new era of the convergence of AI and human activity. This isn't just happening in isolation, this levels the playing field between Silicon valley and places like China.

The retail of the new world isn't just changing brick and mortar retail, it's turning customer experience on its head. Sales associates in-store are becoming less and less relevant, since with each passing year, technology allows consumers to do more. Solutions like Amazon Go are set to make the checkout lane go extinct, in just the next few years. If LIDAR is hitting the streets, it's going to revolutionize the physical store.

Conversational bots and NLP are set to impact retail in yet another wave of how the customer journey is being disrupted. In the new world of retail, AI augments the shopper turning the store into an experience center for brands, where the influence of mobile and AI are the key ingredients to leverage and attract the new consumer, the fabled digital native.

The IoT of retail is the smart speaker and a disruption of customer service, and yet, so much more. In 2017, we are only catching glimpses of the new world of retail, but it is coming. Consumers aren't willing to wait longer or tolerate boredom and poor customer service.

Rise of the Tech Titans

The ultimate brands like Amazon create value everywhere, and that's something vertical and niche-value retailers won't ever be able to compete with. In this light, the demise of mainstream Retail is not so exaggerated. The Amazon app is showing what mobile YOY growth means for the future of its ecosystem.

The retail of the new world is not only full of pitfalls, it's full of inevitabilities showing the rise of artificial intelligence and automation of logistics and fulfillment on a scale, we've never seen before.

Many futurists even go so far as to presume we've automated choice itself in facilitating and monetizing the customer journey on platforms such as Amazon.

If an algorithm does it's job, conversions are only a dopamine pill away. Your red pill won't be the same as my red pill, and as Facebook gives us the content it believes we want to see, the illusion of choice is nearly perfect.

The Matrix of Convenience & the Devils of Innovation

In this light, not being a member of Amazon Prime is not a choice, if it means missing out (#FOMO) on things like Echo, Alexa, same-day delivery, Dash, video services and the disappearing check-out of the grab and go shopping experience coming soon to a city near you.

In a world filled with economic uncertainty, it's not terrorism we're afraid of, it's our place in the the new world order, not just of retail, but in the future of work, business and society where the Internet of Things means a world we're unfamiliar with will be taking the place of an older and outdated physical world un-augmented by data, prediction and machine intelligence.

The retailers of the future must not simply be data natives, they must be disruption natives, and understand the intricacies of the new consumer in the new world of retail.

Shopping is entering a new future of retail and it’s time to recognize the value of artificial intelligence, robots and innovation. It's time we celebrate the layered add-on value of convenience that a single subscription can bring. The post-modern mobile native consumer is Amazon's best customer. #FutureRunDown

I'm the 2nd ranked LinkedIn Top Voice in Marketing and Social, I'm watching the social and technological trends in the future of retail and the customer experience, follow me to stay in touch.

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How do you experience retail, shopping and e-commerce differently than five years ago? Where do you see the future of retail heading?