Even as the Pandemic Persists, the Future of Retail Is Not Locked Down

The retail industry is changing so quickly and deeply that whatever is happening today resembles nothing like last week’s news and will be completely different a week from now. Increasing bankruptcy filings, shifts in-product demand, and more conservative spending among consumers — as much as retailers want to blame the pandemic, these challenges are essentially an acceleration of long-needed change. Shoppers continue their adoption of a blended approach to retail as the crisis evolves. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, consumer use of buy-online, pick-up-in-store channels grew more than four times since 2014, according to a global IBM Institute for Business Value survey, in association with the National Retail Federation. This trend continues its upward trajectory, as more than 75 percent of consumers shared, in a separate NRF study, interest in BOPIS services and 90 percent of those who tried it consider the curbside experience convenient. While such a shift is occurring out of necessity, some analysts predict that some aspects of a contactless, socially distanced customer experience may be here to stay. Retailers that use this moment as an opportunity to reflect, rethink and reset their business models will position themselves for a recovery that will take shape in unexpected ways. Four shifts toward

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