Remarkable Retail

Today we face a veritable tsunami of information, and our challenge is often how to separate the signal from the noise. A shopper can readily find a vast amount of data and perspectives from a plethora of sources, including fellow shoppers. Most retailers’ websites contain highly detailed product information pages, and many now include customer reviews, demonstration videos, and the ability to do side-by-side product comparisons. Sites that aggregate product or service information like TripAdvisor, eBay, and Rakuten do much of the same but typically add the ability to compare products across different retailers. There are seemingly endless product review sites, expert blogs on just about anything you can imagine

The shift from wanting ever more stuff to desiring memorable experiences

The notion that disruption comes out of nowhere, catching once-powerful companies unaware, is rarely true. What’s far more common is that new brands catch fire slowly, consumer behavior shifts over many years, and most technologies take a while to grab a meaningful foothold

While it’s easy to blame Amazon for their woes, the reality is that most of their revenue has gone elsewhere: to off-price retailers, discount mass merchants, or dollar stores that offered stronger value and more convenient locations, or to more upscale alternatives that offered a more relevant and differentiated experience