Transformation: Physical Meets Digital at the Cutting Edge of Tech

To say that the last two years have been ones of transition and transformation for brick-and-mortar retailers would be a dramatic understatement. The year of 2017 was one of the worst for brick-and-mortar retail, with several big-name bankruptcy filings and analysts comparing the market to Great Recession-era performance. The year 2018 featured retrenchment and reckoning, as retailers realized that a “business as usual” mentality was fundamentally unworkable in the age of Amazon.

However, focusing too narrowly on sales will be a detriment to brick-and-mortar retailers in 2019. The lesson that should be learned from years of intense competition with e-commerce isn’t to try to move more product than Amazon does – a Herculean task for any retailer – but to create experiences that resonate with shoppers, drive deeper loyalty, and make the in-store encounter indispensable to the consumer.