Future of Retail – a carefully researched projection of what retail and grocery shopping might look like in 2030 in collaboration with Kesko Group, Valio, Berner, Olvi Group, Aalto University School of Business and many more. Together with 100 + Futurice experts and external community, we identified 7 opportunity areas, 23 trends, 5 different outcomes for each trend, 4 scenarios of the future world and mapped out implications for the industry ecosystem and its partners.
We live with constant change in a VUCA world: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity are the keywords defining our everyday operational environment. At the same time, technical tools advance at high speed. The retail industry is massive in size and impact. Its ability to reimagine itself and develop new sustainable ways to serve global populations is vital to our overall societal development and essential in the ecological restructuring we need.
We wanted to understand the challenges and possible outcomes of the different signals, trends, megatrends on a concrete and researchable level. What will the next ten years look like, and what challenges might be ahead of us?
As a tech company that provides solutions for future worlds, we also wanted to understand the driving forces operating on the technology level and the relationship between the tech and the future customer.
In November 2020, we started crowdsourcing ideas on what retail might look like in 2030. Over four weeks, we engaged hundreds of experts in-house and collected signals from the countries we operate in. We used the hundred ideas generated as a prism through which to create a more comprehensive analysis of the world, so we could look at what the political, economic, societal, technical, legal and environmental drivers of change are. We identified approximately 23 trends for how the world and retail might change.
Based on the trends, we explored four alternative directions of what the future might look like. The building blocks for the four directions were co-created in a workshop with experts from Futurice, Aalto University School of Business, Kesko, Valio, Olvi and Berner. The material was discussed and developed further by Futurice and external experts. For example, we collaborated with Kaivo Partners on the domain of food. The Future table was formed in collaboration with 50 experts from collaborators and facilitated by Futurice.
Based on the future building blocks, the future table, our in-house design, tech and business experts co-wrote four different stories of futures to come. The future started to unfold in four characters, and four prototypes of the future were created around them. During summer 2021, we built this website.
We hope you enjoy exploring the world of retail inside out – from societal phenomenons, such as the rise of single households and the power of Generation Z, to the recycling of products by brands and consumers. The next ten years will be a time of massive changes coming both within the industry and driven by external forces.
Remember that the future does not happen; we actively build it with our actions today.
