Retail Speed of Delivery

Consumers in the retail omni market now are focused on changing lifestyles and how the retail marketplace can meet the demands of their changing demands to meet their lifestyles.  It’s not necessarily that the consumer lifestyle is changing so dramatically or even so quickly, consumers are refining and changing how they meet their lifestyle demands. The focus on in the retail omni market requires a focus on speed of delivery in order to the changing consumer demands.  This means that speed of delivery in the retail market must be a focus of retailers in order to maintain their place in consumer shopping and purchasing. This retail omni market provides a level of choice to consumers that has not been available to consumers in the past and now consumers are really focused on taking advantage of these choices.

This is interesting because consumers have come to a place in their shopping and purchasing practices that focuses on shopping and purchasing capabilities that meet their lifestyle rather than focus on product availability.  Consumers and their interaction with the retail market has reached the point where the product and price priorities have leveled and the differentiating factor now is the ease of shopping and purchasing. Consumers have reached the point where price and availability are expected to be comparable across the marketplace and they now focus on the selection and delivery to meet the consumer needs and demands.  

This change in consumer focus is bringing a new level of change for retailers that is the focus now and driving the disruption in the marketplace.  Unfortunately for retailers, consumers are using the technology available to focus on their priorities which is bringing this new level of disruption to the market.  Retailers must realize that the cycle of change is going to remain and only the focus of the change will shift. Consumers are a fickle bunch and they have embraced the new fact of the retail marketplace that the technology available encourages consumers to put things together in new ways to support changing needs and demands.  

Retail sales outside of the necessities of food and medicine are based on relationships and opportunities and consumers are now in the position to put technology capabilities togethers in ways that can dramatically increase the opportunities, both timing and types of opportunities. This means that retailers must increase their level of flexibility with process process and functionality to meet the changing consumer demands in addition to increasing the level of consumer engagement and collaboration in order to build the relationships that allow retailers to identify the changing demands.  

Retail functionality has reached a point where flexibility is the focus and the framework that many of the larger retailers have implemented to support the flexibility has also reached a point where is can swiftly react to market demands.  The requirement now for retailers is the identification and reaction time to the shopping and purchasing demands. You can see that the recent focus has been on shopping and purchasing capabilities and that price and availability is now the price of admission.  Rather than focusing on the capability retailers must now focus on how they identify the changing demands because this ‘how’ will allow these retailers to identify and react to the future market disruptions.