‘One need only look at two of the main drivers of change in the retail sector, convenience (what is easiest, cheapest, nearest and most convenient) and the shopping experience (who adds the most value), to predict that, by 2040, supermarkets as we now know them may have disappeared’, said Jaime Castelló, a lecturer in the Department of Marketing at ESADE, at the conference ‘The Supermarket of the Future’, organised by the ESADECREAPOLIS Retail Forum in conjunction with Accenture Digital. Tony Stockil, CEO of Javelin Group, agreed, noting, ‘in twenty years’ time, the landscape of the sector will be unrecognisable and we will see the extent to which digitisation has been able to transform the market’. 

Digitisation is cultural

‘Globally, e-commerce has matured and it continues to grow rapidly in large cities’, said Stockil. One of the most advanced countries in this regard is the UK, although, he added, ‘the inflation resulting from Brexit could halt this development’. In any case, according to Stockil, as digitisation gains ground in the retail sector, ‘many businesses will have to offer online sales to survive’. This is already happening in many cases, he explained, such as online grocery stores, ‘which have not yet achieved profitable margins’. Furthermore, the Javelin Group CEO stressed, ‘digitisation has increased the diversity of channels and enabled greater price transparency’ in a market in which ‘it is particularly difficult to tackle competitors such as Amazon, which are already selling groceries directly online’. Consequently, traditional retail businesses have to incorporate ‘a range of new skills and abilities’ and ‘innovate their business models’.

According to Raimon Miret, managing director of Accenture Products Iberia, the most disruptive trends in the sector will be: ‘omni-channel retailing; the introduction of digital technology in brick-and-mortar stores; the use of big data to obtain real-time knowledge of what the customer wants or needs; the crossing of the information we have about the customer (transactional and relational); and, finally, the use of tools that will enable more dynamic management of prices and the return on offers, promotions and campaigns’.

‘Long gone are the days when it was enough for brands to optimise the performance of their factories and advertising and leave it to others to move the product to the points of sale’, stressed Castelló. In this regard, Luis Montoro, sales director at Mahou San Miguel, noted that manufacturers have to ‘work closely with retailers to understand shoppers’ needs and behaviour at the point of sale in order to add greater value during the product development stage’. According to Mercè Buxadera, CIO for Southwest Europe at Danone, ‘Digital orders can be used to optimise the portfolio and improve sales forecasting at stores.’

Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar stores have to ‘focus on customer service and the shopping experience’, said Stockil, as that is ‘what e-commerce cannot offer’. To achieve this, he warned, ‘they need to increase their analytical capabilities and be more agile in terms of experimentation’. According to Félix Chamorro, Industry Manager at Google Spain, ‘We have the data; the question is how do we start to act on it, how do we learn to streamline resources and monetise them’.

In short, Stockil concluded, ‘digital transformation today is, above all, a cultural question, not just a technological one or a matter of market orientation’.

The future of supermarkets

Speaking at the forum at ESADE, Francesco Piaceri, a project leader at Accenture Italy, recounted the experience of the Supermercato del Futuro di Coop, a joint project by Coop Italia and Accenture commissioned by the Expo 2015 in Milan. According to Piaceri, ‘The concept was the result of considerations about the evolution and social and technological trends affecting markets throughout history’. Markets ‘used to be open, outdoor places, where products were displayed haphazardly’ and ‘more social than functional’. ‘Today’s supermarkets are more effective, better designed.’ In this regard, he continued, ‘we sought to combine the two aspects: the social experience and the efficiency and functionality that technology offers’. To this end, his team developed an open supermarket, with cutting-edge technology’, ‘a place where customers can see each other and interact, like they used to’. ‘We viewed it not only as a marketing exercise’, he underscored, ‘but also a test of whether customers were ready to experience the change in how consumers interact with products’.

According to Stockil, ‘The most disruptive technologies in the industry, such as robots and drones, the Internet of Things and connected devices, or artificial intelligence, are setting the course for the retail sector’s new models’. At the same time, Castelló noted, ‘Our consumption habits are indicative of the direction society is headed.’

Retail Forum

Carme Juanes, director of the ESADECREAPOLIS Retail Forum, acknowledged the importance of building ‘platforms to meet, share and exchange knowledge such as this one, in order to encourage innovation and the transformation of the retail sector’. ‘Faced with a market with an excess of information, companies in the sector need to find forums where they can identify and access rigorous information that allows them to implement effective solutions’, she emphasised.