Consumers can use an app to order products and have them delivered to wherever they happen to be.

The Swedish start-up Wheely has also developed a self-driving store, Moby, which both replenishes its own stocks and drives itself out to the customer to deliver orders. The customer uses a mobile app to open the store and is greeted by a hologram.

Product offerings are being developed in new channels and contexts

If in the past retail was about making a transaction - about buying merchandise in a store - these days it is more about feelings, entertainment and interactions. Technology and data are used to draw learnings from customer behaviours, making it possible to provide them with services and products that are as personalised as possible. The traditional retail environment is giving way to new contexts, and value is being created for consumers at moments that did not exist before.

A few examples of companies that have moved their business into new contexts include General Motors, Lufthansa/Rewe, Volition and Castorama.

General Motors’ Marketplace has made things simpler for its customers by making it possible to book products, make dinner reservations and reserve parking spaces directly through a touchscreen interface in the car. By using real-time data on where the vehicle and driver are, GM is also able to offer personalised experiences.

Another example is how Lufthansa, working with Rewe, has streamlined and made it easier for customers to order products in-flight for home delivery.

Magic Wallpaper by Castorama is an interactive wallpaper that narrates different fairytales when you place the associated app in front of a character appearing on the wallpaper. By mixing and matching characters, users can hear hundreds of unique fairy tales.

This is a great example of a company in a given industry (wallpaper and home decor) thinking outside the box and finding a partner in a completely different industry (media) to create innovative concepts and product offers.

Participatory Retail and Consumer-to-Business

Participatory retail, the practice of bringing customers closer to the brand and making use of them in product development, is becoming more and more common. The customers are no longer passive consumers, but are both able to and expect to have a hand in the development of the products. Volition is a company that has benefited from this behaviour, and which gets its customers involved in its product development process. Customers can submit proposals for new ideas and concepts. The ideas that garner the most votes are implemented by the company, and the customer gets to share in the sales proceeds generated by his or her idea. Other examples of companies where customers are highly involved in the product development process are Rent The RunWay and B8ta, which both harness technology and data collection in order to obtain continuous customer feedback (Consumer-to-Business, C2B) so that they can improve their services and products.