Retail Economics lays out the year for retailers at the Delivery Conference
Whether the UK goes into recession or not is kind of a red herring given that the challenges facing retailers this year are real, significant and won’t go away by themselves – retail has its work cut out. Richard Lim, CEO of Retail Economics opened this year’s Delivery Conference and laid out the true picture …
Are brands and own label really at war?
Recent figures from Kantar show that own-label sales rose 9.3% in 2022 proof that earlier research is correct – many people tried own label products during Covid because their favourite brands were often missing. And some were just looking to experiment, behaviour brought on by having more time on their hands at home. And now …
The case for AI is unstoppable
Just in case no one is quite clear on the many areas of retail that will be affected by artificial intelligence, it’s worth, in this article, listing those main areas. One of the problems is that there is a debate on the future impact of AI on employment, possibly leading to another generation of mass …
Is the customer still king?
Allowing for my use of a soon to be cancelled phrase designed to suggest a universal truth about retail, that the customer must always come first, maybe this is actually no longer true anyway. The sine qua non of retail has already been questioned for some years now – the fact that if you treat …
Where will retailers spend their tech dollars in 2023?
No reminders are needed that 2023 and 2024 are going to continue to be tough for retailers. And this will have an impact on tech budgets. We’ve already seen a cooling in spend in 2022 as retailers renegotiate things like support contracts, delay projects or narrow their scope as they look to navigate economic headwinds. …
Will convenience stores protect Morrisons from Lidl and Aldi?
Morrisons is already in debt to the tune of £6.6bn and is now facing higher debt repayment costs as borrowing costs soar, yet it will plough on with its acquisition of over 1000 McColl’s convenience stores. There were some doubts as to how the deal might go ahead but in the end the Competition and …
Will retailers rein back their tech spending?
The short answer, thanks in greater part to RSR Research in the US, is no. https://www.rsrresearch.com/research/retailers-are-worried-should-tech-solutions-providers-be The reasons given are simple : retail has changed and the consumer has changed so the tech that many retailers currently have will simply not serve them any longer. In short, unless they continue to adopt technologies that enable …
Brands and own label battle it out over Tibbles the cat
Much has been made of the growth in own and private label sales. I’m combining them because they are both about supermarket profits and both are a threat to brands, although there are instances where both can co-exist on the shelf and thrive together. According to ingredients supplier Kerry and NielsenIQ quoted in Grocery Dive, …
How the Great Resignation transformed labour
In response to labour shortages brought on by Covid and the Great Resignation, retailers are reinventing how they recruit, train, motivate, and empower staff, says Fabrice Haiat, CEO of YOOBIC. The Great Resignation was a mass transfer of labour to new roles or retirement. In the US alone, between 3.5 and 4.5 million Americans handed …
Where will retailers place their tech bets in 2022?
We have read all the trends posts, and I mean all of them, so we have combined our experience with what the market is saying and taken a view, which essentially means we picked only the ones we think matter, particularly as we disagree with a lot of the recycled nonsense that just gets rebranded …