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The Trend: EQ-Commerce

EQ-Commerce AI artwork by Samuel Davies for The Future Laboratory

Back in April we published our retail sector macrotrend, EQ-Commerce, exploring how the industry is adapting to a post-Covid world by navigating more complex purchasing journeys and catering for a consumer need for greater personalisation.

Today’s consumers are seamlessly integrating digital and physical interactions, inviting brands into their homes while still relying on physical stores. This complex purchasing journey poses challenges for retailers, intensifying efforts to acquire and retain customers. Over the past decade, personalisation has become crucial – but its methods are evolving due to privacy legislation. Despite the perceived difficulty of focusing on individual customers, technological advances – particularly in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and natural language processing – are empowering retailers to provide personalised attention at scale, shaping a future of EQ-Commerce.

In the report, we uncover how retailers are delivering the intuitive, intimate, individualised, interconnected tenets of EQ-Commerce by combining technological advances with a human touch, creating personalisation at every touchpoint. We focus on how retail is entering the home in more depth in our Home States Futures: Residential Retail macrotrend. Members of LS:N Global can also access the on-demand webinar from the event here.

The Big Idea: How Travel Retail is Evolving

At the TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition and Conference 2023, Chinese shoppers were still the predominant target customers for the travel retail marketplace as they resumed overseas trips. We highlighted the key takeaways from the event:

: In the post-pandemic period, the Asia-Pacific region experienced a robust recovery. Initial beneficiaries included destinations like Thailand, Japan and South Korea. The high costs of international travel for Chinese tourists and fewer direct flights contributed to longer transfer times, creating more opportunities for duty-free shopping

: Beauty giants talked about the importance of technology in building personal relationships with travelling beauty customers. The L’Oréal pavilion at TFWA Asia Pacific was a 500-square-metre immersive experience that focused on the company’s sustainability and innovative beauty tech ethos entitled Create the Beauty that Moves the World

: Alcohol brands were focusing on personalisation. Pernod Ricard showcased its Martell City Series editions for Hainan and Singapore, which the company said were designed to appeal to a cross-section of travellers in the Asia region

Prada Beauty Paradoxe pop-up store, China

The Campaign: Ikea shows off its savvy side

Show Off Your Savvy by Ikea UK and Mother London demonstrates humble and thrifty methods of saving energy, money and water or reducing food waste, UK

In April, Ikea UK and Ireland joined forces with London-based agency Mother for a new visual campaign, Show Off Your Savvy, promoting humble and thrifty items saving energy, money and reducing food waste for the home.

The collection of films took inspiration from Gen Z’s favourite short-form video formats, including outfit checks turned into ‘savvy checks’ and unboxing vlogs showcasing products. Sarah Green, country marketing manager for Ikea UK and Ireland, said the campaign ‘is rooted in the insight that we can get as much joy when being savvy as we do from being extravagant’.

Amid a cost of living crisis, brands have to adapt their storytelling to appear in touch with reality. Businesses targeting mainstream consumers should embrace the success of relatable content on social media and move away from the 2010s Insta-aspirational lifestyle to showcase more authentic narratives. This is something we covered in Retail-flation Responses in which we analysed how retailers innovate to support consumers’ tightening purse strings due to inflation.

The Interview: The Future of Live Shopping

Photography by Liza Summer

Later in the year, we spoke to Sophie Frères, CEO and co-founder of plug-and-play live shopping solution LiSA, on shifting the dial for retailers to view social commerce through an entertainment lens. We round up the main takeaways from the interview:

: Expertise leads to engagement and retailers need to own innovation around live shopping. Live shopping gives them an unfiltered way of demonstrating their expertise to customers directly, in a highly interactive and fun way

: LiSA’s partnership with UK high street retailer M&S started about two years ago and was up and running in three months. To the brand’s surprise, the most popular streams were those hosted by their own team from both head office and the shop floor

: Frères advised retailers to have a low set-up in terms of production costs. The resulting ROI will be good and retailers testing live shopping tend to see more returning customers and better engagement

: We will continue to see a difference between live shopping in China and in the West. ‘It has grown in a different way than it will here because the social media eco-systems are different,’ she said

The Space: Tiffany & Co’s landmark restoration

Tiffany & Co’s Fifth Avenue flagship store, New York, US

Tiffany & Co's Fifth Avenue flagship store, New York, US

Many luxury stores were renovated in 2023, with Tiffany & Co’s flagship store on New York’s Fifth Avenue being the most highly anticipated of them all.

Renovating the iconic store was down to long-term LVMH Group collaborator, architect Peter Marino. He transformed the 10,000-square-metre store into a luxury jewellery destination. A curtain-like wraparound glass wall and metal panel exterior were envisaged as a giant diamond on the Manhattan skyline and the 10 floors inside, including the Breakfast at Tiffany’s café, are brimming with heritage, history and odes to the brand’s rich design archives.

Over 40 artworks punctuate the store interiors, emphasising the brand’s positioning as a cultural player and influencer. The famous Tiffany turquoise blue was used as a backdrop to the collection, which includes a series of re-appropriated Tiffany advertising campaigns by Richard Prince.

Download the Future Forecast 2024 report

Now that you know what shaped 2023, discover what’s on the horizon. Download our Future Forecast 2024 report comprising 50 new trends across 10 key consumer sectors, insights from our analysts and interviews with global innovators.

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The Future Sessions Bundle, which includes both our Future Forecast 2024 and Future Five 2024 PDF reports, is available to purchase from The Future Laboratory shop. Interested in becoming a member? Learn more here.