Top Retail Insights for Businesses from 2020
In a year of unprecedented disruption, the top retail insights for retail businesses from 2020 reflect the rapid and widespread change that defined the year in retail. While every industry experienced some level of change and upheaval in 2020, few felt it to the depth that retail did. The retail industry, often characterized for its ability to quickly shift and adapt, felt the pressure to innovate quickly in order to meet shopper demand and navigate the unique circumstances of a worldwide pandemic.
Retail Insights
Lessons Learned From A Decade as a Retail Consultant
As businesses across the retail industry navigated the dizzying pace of change in 2020, those core industry tenets of adaptation, innovation, and agility were never on stronger display. In this piece, Retail Lead and Associate Partner Sean Burke reflects on the lessons he’s gained in over a decade of retail consulting.
Check out Sean’s thoughts here
A Conversation on Incorporating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Organizational DNA
While many were reeling from the impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic, retailers in the U.S. were also focusing their time, energy, and effort into addressing issues around racial injustice, inequality, and discrimination that took center stage throughout 2020. While 2020 has sparked a new effort to address these long-standing issues, the solution to the challenges highlighted by countless protests and social movements can’t be solved overnight.
As Diversity Chair and Clarkston Manager Brandon Miller shares, businesses will be forced to look at the very core of their business in order to effectively realize diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organization.
Applying UX Principles for User-Centric Organizational Change
Change is hard for anyone and scaling that challenge up to an organizational level increases the complexity exponentially. The engine of retail has long run on a fuel of change and transformation. Making that change happen and making that change last, however, are two different things. As User Experience Consultant Sara Morris shares, approaching organizational change through a UX lens can help ensure sustainable success by improving engagement and adoption with your employees.
Using Analytics to Improve In-Store Retail Experiences
As retailers have tiptoed back to in-store operations slowly, optimizing the experience in store is becoming even more critical as a means for easing shopper woes. Few businesses have been able to realize the power of analytics quite like retail. In this piece from Clarkston Data Scientist and Analytics Lead Maggie Seeds, learn how businesses can use analytics to improve operations, promotions, staffing, and more.
Read more from Maggie on in-store optimization with analytics here
Adapting Your Direct to Consumer Retail Experience to Meet Your Shopper Needs
To talk about 2020 in retail without covering direct-to-consumer or eCommerce would be something of an oversight. This year, retailers bolstered their online presence more than ever, rolling out new ways to engage shoppers, fulfill orders, and evolve the shopping experience. In this eBook, Senior Consultant and Digital Enablement Expert Lorraine Mackiewicz covers the most critical components of the digital retail experience.
Check out Lorraine’s eBook Here
Many of the top retail insights for retail businesses from 2020 offer lessons that will be impactful and effective well into the new year and beyond. Retailers that are able to continue riding the wave of innovation caused by 2020 will effectively transform their short-term solutions into long-term strategies as a means for continuously embracing shoppers’ expectations and preferences.
