Following this week’s dinner with Cate Trotter from Insider Trends, this post delves into the *future* to see what the world of retail will be like in 5 years time. Grab your hover boards!

Cate’s key trends for the future of retail

1. All superfluity will be removed from the consumer journey; e.g. going to a shop and finding that the item that you wanted isn’t in stock.
2. Minimising returns. Companies like M and Co are already working with a data analytics company who are predicting which items are most frequently returned and pulling these items from their stock. This preventative procedure has saved them £400,000.
3. No more queuing! Qudini are a company who let customers ‘virtual queue’ on their smartphone. This is a lot less frustrating for the customer who is more likely to think well of the brand.
4. Offline stores will soon have the same functionality as online sites. Stores can now start to use analytics to track where people are in the store geographically to get people moving through the store. It can analyse which displays attract the most attention.
5. Targeted marketing for high value customers. Ometria can very quickly analyse if someone is a high value customer.
6. Personalisation. Cutting out irrelevant marketing.
7. Invisible retail. Removing the need for tills, as customers will be able to trust the brand and scan the items they’d like.
8. 3D printing to create personalised luxury items.
9. Stores as ‘spaces’ – a three-dimensional space to sell products.

For more information about retail trends, see what happened at Cate’s TableCrowd dinner.