NRF leader eyes retail rejuvenation as stores fuse physical and digital
With record-level store closings in 2017, this past year was filled with discussion on the state of the industry and headlines touting the retail apocalypse. But as the National Retail Federation and IHL Group showed, the data and facts told a different story: for each company closing a store, 2.7 companies were opening stores.
“Retailers are proud they proved a lot of pundits wrong,” says Ellen Davis, senior vice president of research and strategic initiatives at the National Retail Federation (NRF). “Then, to see the 5.5 percent increase in sales over the holiday season, it was a dose of optimism. It was validation for what they knew all along: Hey, this is an industry that’s changing – but that’s awesome.”
In a sit-down interview with Microsoft at the NRF’s annual BIG Show, Davis shared more trends for 2018. Among them, Davis sees more retailers bolstering their brick-and-mortar stores with sleek, online experiences and vice versa. It’s a key part of the quest to offer a better customer experience for shoppers.
“You have to change your store footprint,” she says. You have to change your digital offerings. You’ve got to figure out how to infuse all of that. You have to communicate to your customers in a very different way. It’s a sophisticated challenge to solve. But a lot of executives are excited by this.”
To learn more, read the full interview on the Microsoft Transform Blog.
