Trends transforming today's retail industry

BOPIS

BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup in Store). This idea gained traction a couple of years ago with the main goal in mind to aid brick and mortar retailers combat online retailers. Its purpose was to get consumers into the stores, save them on shipping costs and be able to get merchandise to the customer in a much quicker time. At present this method has now expanded to include kerbside delivery.

Robots

With headlines like ‘1/3 of jobs to be taken by robots by 2025’ it shows that online shopping is still growing and eventually theirs not going to be enough human workers to pick all of the orders in demand. Though you won’t take as many trips to retail stores you will still be buying the same amount of, if not more things and you are going to need someone or something to do the picking and packing.

Subscription Service

In the past subscription services were reserved for things like newspapers and magazines. Now thanks to companies such as Amazon or HelloFresh, a new business model has arrived letting customers pay a recurring price for services such as the same product each week or a different pair of socks every month for example.

Part-time pretty much standard

The retail sector used to be a great place to get a full-time job fairly easily, but now staffing is done using algorithms and avoiding providing benefits where possible, part time has become the more common type of work taken up. With little effort this can be detrimental to building loyalty and a brand profile, it’s a toss up for retailers, do they have more part time workers because they train less or less part time workers and train more?

Rentals

One of the more surprising turn of events in retails is the ability to rent pretty much anything ant any time on a price plan that suits you. As baby bloomers start opting out of buying the latest trends, retails will need to look towards millennials to make up the loses and that generation much prefers to rent, share or even downsize than buy something right out.