This whitepaper, by DHR and in conjunction with Ogilvy Consulting, is part of a series of events across Asia and the US discussing the retail industry transformation.
THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION RACE TO BE FUTURE READY
DEFINING THE FUTURE READY ORGANISATION
Shopping is potentially the area of human behaviour that has been most widely changed by digital technology. Today’s shopper expects their experience to be invisibly shaped around them, at any time, at their fingertips.
This is having a huge impact on the fortunes of Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Companies. Headlines are screaming that we are in the middle of a retail apocalypse with shoppers abandoning malls.
Every week seems to bring a new disruptive model that challenges established consumer brands by delivering faster, better, and highly connected experiences.
Retail and CPG brands are at the sharp end of digital transformation as they deal with the ‘hyper connected shopper’. New e-commerce led shopping platforms have emerged; the Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent platforms in China, Lazada in South East Asia, FlipKart in India, Amazon in Australia, India and Singapore.
Niche platforms with focused value propositions around needs (for example Wish, catering to the bargain hunter) or categories (for example Love, Bonito in fashion) have also become strong players in the last few years. These platforms are digitally native and have understood from the outset the value of deeply mining data to understand and connect with the digital shopper.
These platforms have seriously challenged traditional retailers in the battle for shopper attention and share of wallet, as they face the challenge of moving from single to omni-channel experiences and unlocking new ways to understand their customer.
For brands, these platforms represent new challenges but also opportunities to create and enhance consumer experiences. Furthermore, brands from the CPG world are experimenting with models that bring them into a direct relationship with the customer, taking advantage of the opportunities to create new digital platforms either owned or in-partnership.