Scenario Building for Future-Ready Retail
The retail industry has been evolving at an accelerated pace in recent years, largely due to the advent of digital technology and e-commerce. The rise of online shopping has changed the way consumers make purchases, and retailers have had to adapt to remain relevant. However, the pace of technological change is not slowing down, and the retail industry needs to take an active role in shaping its future.
These advancements allow consumers to be more connected, informed and demanding. Retailers need to be able to keep up with changing consumer behaviours, preferences and expectations by anticipating future trends and investing in the technology and infrastructure required to remain competitive. And as new players and startups enter the market, they are bringing with them innovative business models that challenge traditional retail practices. Retailers must keep a close eye on emerging trends and technologies to identify opportunities and threats to their businesses.
Approach
To better understand the retail landscape, we conducted horizon scanning, which is a research technique from the Foresight practice, identifying early signals of change in core and peripheral environments. We explored adjacent markets to the retail space and found ~90 interesting signals that hint toward possible future directions. We clustered those signals and identified themes and core uncertainties to help define parameters around plausible futures. Within those futures, we created future-looking scenarios that hint toward a wide range of emerging technologies, social changes, and product opportunities.
The following scenarios are intentionally distributed across time, one in the near future and two further out based on the collective decisions we make today. We’ve also included strategic prompts and questions that help us to design toward these futures. And while the future is anything but certain, we can use these scenarios as inspiration to shape and inform our preferred futures and build resilience against market disruptors through early discovery, capability development and strategic planning.
Seamless Future: A Day in the Life
In 2025, consumers are enjoying a proliferation of omnichannel experiences, connected devices, and personalized products incorporated into their routines. They’re optimistic about retail futures and the next era of shopping platforms.
1: Person waking up in bed, looking ahead at hologram screens that read “good morning, Wed Apr 12” as well as weather, stock prices, and news
2: Person standing in front of a smart mirror deciding what to wear, with mirror showing person wearing different outfit options
3: Person using phone to directly scan a handbag and receive information about price and details immediately??
4: Person running on a treadmill with fitness stats and social sharing on smartwatch
5: Person is sitting at a restaurant exploring a virtual menu that includes personal and ‘economic’ nutrition, including calories, sustainability index, and carbon footprint?
6: Person is sitting at home on the couch with work laptop, TV, and music on; person uses a voice command to enable night mode, which automatically turns off all technology and closes blinds
Prompts and questions
Intentional Future: Retired by 21
As we see autonomous task robots and AGI continue to develop to a point where many entry to mid-level jobs can be replaced, citizens are forced to rethink how to spend their time and what are meaningful activities. In this future scenario from 2032, citizens have become more intentional about the impact of their activities, and this greatly shapes what retail has become.
1. Person sitting in the kitchen sipping coffee and staring at his tablet that reads, “Good morning! Enter my digital garden”
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2. Looking at the tablet, the person sees several? ‘garden seeds’ that visualize ideas labelled “Find Your Purpose” and “Sustainable Living”
3. Person is thinking about a camera from his storage and a store called “Product Palliative Care”
4. Person is walking outside holding a bag, passing posters that say “Why Not Try Another You?” and “Be Another You”
5. Person arrives at “Product Palliative Care” store and drops off his old camera to be scanned. The scan says: “Product life at a glance: 384 memories captured, 27 locations, 13 friends, 4 partners.”
6. The worker at the store receives the old camera and is thinking about how to recycle the camera, with thought bubbles that include the camera as an eye for a car, a webcam, and a head for a robot.
Prompts and questions
Umami Future: My Social Gatherings (M.S.G)
1. Person 1 is sitting at home, but joining Person 2 by using AR technology. Person 2 (and Person 1 as a hologram) is walking outside and is prompted by her glasses, “In 0.5km, your favourite ice cream shop has a limited edition flavour!”?
2. Person 2 (and Person 1 as a hologram) are outside the ice cream shop looking at a screen that is only visible to them through their glasses that read “NEW! Limited Edition Flavor!!! Chic Cocoa, get yours before someone else does”
3. Person 2 walks into the store and uses a QR code to look at the menu
4. Person 1 is looking at the menu from a screen from his home.?
5. Person 2 sees an AR projection that reads, “Welcome back! You are most likely to enjoy: Mellow Matcha [starred favourite] or Chic Cocoa [limited edition flavour]”
6. Person 2 receives ice cream and person 1 is receiving a drone delivery of his ice cream cone.
The optimization of consumption, connectedness, and opportunity are pathways that lead to this speculative scenario from 2027. Users are hyper-connected with brain-machine implants and geofencing technology, leveraging umami algorithms that seek to find the tastiest experiences in the shortest path for our pleasures.
Strategic Prompts
Final Thoughts
The future of retail is a collective and continual negotiation, and as a society, we are currently in the middle of some very important conversations. Businesses and individuals can begin shaping their desired futures by allocating their teams, time, and capital to problems and solutions that matter to them. To do this, we need to keep a pulse on what is happening within and around our industries, regularly considering future implications based on what we see today.
Good strategic planning is not about predicting the future, but rather it is about analyzing current decisions and dynamics, identifying plausible scenarios, and actively planning toward or against certain futures.
The retail industry needs to take an active role in shaping its future by embracing change and anticipating emerging trends. Retailers need to be proactive in their approach to adapt to the changing landscape of retail and seize new opportunities. Failing to do so risks becoming obsolete in a highly competitive market. The choice is between being a spectator and a participant, and the retail industry should strive to be the latter. But it starts by asking these types of questions and having a purposeful process to assess the landscape and develop a resilient product strategy.