Looking Back: Retail
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Retail monoliths such as Amazon and Alibaba are defined by the promise of convenience and a frictionless path to purchase, but this efficiency has come at the expense of engagement.

With consumers tired of bland retail platforms and mindlessly acquiring goods, our 2019 macrotrend Community Commerce explored how e-commerce is undergoing a paradigm shift. Consumers are moving away from these big-box retailers in search of new forms of micro-commerce that prioritise authentic exchanges between brands and people.

‘The problem is that we, as human beings, don’t merely shop to acquire products – not all the time anyway. We also shop to discover new things, to socialise with friends and to entertain ourselves,’ says Doug Stephens, founder and president of consultancy Retail Prophet.

As consumers define new ways to access and exchange products, Community Commerce will continue to gain momentum in 2020 with a focus on more interactive and community-orientated shopping practices. Our recent microtrend Peer Platforms signals how consumers are driving the conversation around brands in their own communities, and to survive the next decade, brands will have to listen.

Acknowledging that the digital revolution is increasingly affecting fashion, retail and brand communications, British retailer Selfridges’ The New Order campaign was launched in July designed to showcase how the digital and physical worlds are colliding.

Throughout 2019, the store invited a series of global digital creatives to envisage what commerce will look like in the near future. Campaign activations included an augmented reality (AR) artwork in the atrium by artist Jon Emmony, branded campaigns by Ines Alpha, and digitally rendered products that allowed shoppers to buy items directly from the department store’s window.

Reiterating the sentiment of our Immaterial Fashion macrotrend, Emma Kidd, Selfridges' director of creative direction, notes that ‘the digital realm has shifted the limits of fashion – we’re no longer constrained by what is humanly or materially possible. Our new digital tools are causing a revolution in what fashion looks like, and what it can do for us'.

Despite retailers continuing to integrate new digital and sustainable practices into their bricks-and-mortar stores throughout 2019, it was the digital retail realm that evolved most significantly over the past year.

Obsess is a virtual retail space that is re-inventing online product discovery and the e-commerce experience. Rendered in CGI, a collection of virtual stores provides an immersive and contextual 360-degree shopping experience showcasing a cross-sector of products. Shoppers can interact with 3D replicas of items for sale and shop directly through the platform.

In our recent interview with Obsess founder Neha Singh, she emphasised that these new virtual spaces are not designed to replace physical brand touchpoints, but to complement them, and most importantly, enhance online shopping. ‘One of the things we do is to create experiences virtually, but we can also take physical stores and make them shoppable online. That enables us to take the physical assets and increase the ROI because now, if you make your store shoppable and discoverable online, it’s accessible to a much wider audience.’

Now that you know what shaped 2019, discover what’s on the horizon. Download our Future Forecast 2020 report comprising 50 new behavioural patterns across 10 key consumer sectors, expert opinion pieces and interviews with global innovators.