Voices of Asian retailers on trends and strategies

C-suite retailers, retail industry experts, and technology specialists from various countries in the region gathered at the Retail Asia-Pacific Top 500 Trends & Strategies Roundtable on October 28 at Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort & Spa for an interactive roundtable discussion.

Here’s a summary of the discussion by Audrey Kang of Boostrap.

The C-Suite session turned into a collective sharing of wisdom on what the future retail trends and the winning strategies are. The flow of the roundtable discussion was to first identify a common base of future retail trends among the delegates and then to formulate a few key winning strategies together. Dr Lynda Wee, CEO of Bootstrap and adjunct associate professor for Retail Management at Nanyang Technological University, set the stage for the discussion by establishing the understanding that in a technology-savvy generation, all industries are being disrupted.

Operating at the edge of chaos, she urged seminar participants to re-imagine the Future of Business Environment and the Future of Retailing.

First Segment: Top Future Retail Trends

A discussion on the notable retail trends as determined by the delegates kick-started the first segment on future retail trends. Professor eigh Sparks, deputy principal of the University of Stirling in the UK and Professor of Retail Studies, and Anson Bailey, partner (Business Development) of KPMG Hong Kong, both helmed this segment.

Professor Sparks opened the discussion with a clear call for retailers to refrain from going into retail entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Although innovation in technology is rife in the retail entertainment space, the entertainment itself must be driven by the customers.
Customers want to be empowered to determine how they would like to be entertained by the retailers, and not merely accept what retailers have planned for them.

Convenience and ease are becoming increasingly important too, he pointed out.

Technology such as artificial intelligence to smart cities with accelerator or incubator programmes for the next generation of entrepreneurs have emerged in retailing, Bailey added.

While the innovation in technology is impressive, technology is but an enabler with its role to add value and not to dilute the customer experience.

Motivated by the sharing on future trends by Professor Sparks and Bailey, the delegates took turns to contribute their individual opinions on what the Future Retail Trends are. At the end of the discussion, the participants took a straw poll to determine the top three Future Retail Trends. The trends identified are:

• Retail Entertainment
• Value of Convenience
• Innovation in the Supply Chain

Second Segment: Winning Strategies for Retail Entertainment

With this common trend platform, the delegates embarked on the second segment by exploring winning strategies. Retail consultant Kevin Dyson, a former CEO of C. K. Tang Ltd who has served as executive vice-president of Barneys New York, proposed that in order for retailers to engage customers, they have to go big on lifestyle and local brands.

Dyson believes that there is much untapped potential in local brands that can be brought to the global stage. By going back to local roots, mixing local with global, retailers can differentiate themselves by creating a lifestyle encompassing various cultures.

Grace Tan, director of ToTT, suggested that there is no need for sophisticated content development. Under her leadership, ToTT sees technology as a strategic resource to push ahead. Content is developed and published through smartphones, she said, while customer membership is leveraged through Facebook likes.

Being authentic is the key to the strategy of a lifestyle brand. “Shopping is not a chore; it is a delight,” Tan declared.

Delegates agreed that retailing has gone beyond story-telling and merchandise display both offline and online. Instead, authenticity allows retailers to build trust, and in turn, a relationship with their customers.

Therefore, Retail Entertainment requires retailers to engage with customers at the physical, emotional and mental levels by allowing them to discover the world and themselves — this is always a delightful experience.

Three Winning Strategies for retail entertainment were proposed by the delegates.

• Cultivate a Learning Lifestyle

Retailers can leverage education and skills acquisition to cultivate a Learning Lifestyle among their customers.

Tan shared that for ToTT, cooking classes were held to draw customers into its stores. By doing so, customers get to know what ToTT stands for, and are able to experience for themselves ToTT’s products and see how these products can be assimilated into their lifestyles. Customers are usually keen to learn and discover, she added.

• Ensure consistency across Online-to-Offline (O2O)

Wherever the customer goes, they have to receive the same authentic experience. Retailers have to ensure consistency across all platforms from online websites and social media to offline stores, even Pop-up Stores.

One of the small discussion groups suggested that a Chief Innovation Officer be appointed to ensure a coherent strategy for the O2O execution.

• Gather Customer Insights

To win in today’s world, the crux of the matter lies in Customer Insights.

This is arguably the most important of the three Winning Strategies. Customer Insights shape and determine the messages retailers should send to customers.

Retailers have to constantly ask themselves “what do my customers look like?”. Through data mining, retailers are able to deep dive into the motivations behind customers’ decisions, the influences shaping their opinions, and the mediums they share information with one another.

Conclusion

Delegates left the session with a common understanding that retailers can no longer presume they have knowledge of and understand what their customers want. With modern day’s technology, there is no excuse for lack of customer insights and understanding.