[Biz Takeouts Podcast] 94: The future state of retail with Mike Saunders

The report, focuses on five digital disruptive forces affecting customers of retailers. What are these forces?
Mike Saunders: These are the five elements we believe the retail players need to focus on to be successful in the digital space.
Social - the big trick here is that you are trying to connect consumers. Using the power or crowds and influence.
Mobile - mobile device gave us a platform where we can take the technology and information with us in store. So retailers can communicate with customers at the place where the purchase is happening.
Data - trying to understand the data we have access to, meaning we can have greater understanding of the customers.
Ecommerce - this is the disruption of transactions, the impact of make transactions take place in the online space. Basically, this allows transactions to happening anywhere and not just in store.
Connected Objects - also known as the Internet of things. In the special world we look at how humans connect with humans, but in the Internet of things, we connect machines to machines to machines allowing them to operate each other with no human interaction. The impact is on data we can collect from purchases.

Who should download The Future State of Retail report?
Mike Saunders: If you are a brand, selling products in a store, a key aspect of the report is how to create a customer experience in the store. Retailers themselves as well as shopping centres. These are the three stakeholders we have focused this report on.