For a customer walking into a store in 2030, it will feel really integrated—meaning, affirmations from social media or friends and family who aren’t even near me will somehow be integrated into that store.

In 2030, shopping will feel incredibly personalised. It’ll feel like the sales associates in that store know me as well as a close friend or maybe as well as a personal stylist.

As soon as a customer go in, they [the store] will know exactly when the customer was there last and, therefore, what its replenishment needs would be. And all [the store] will do is a confirmation of, “Here’s what must be out at home. Should we just reorder it for you?” But that’s not the main reason the customer would go to the store, because the customer could do that of its mobile device. The reason the customer would go in is because the store would actually draw it in by saying, “New products, new brands, just for you, customised, personalised. Come have a look.”

There are companies out there that are personalising the sounds you hear in the store and the scents that you smell. They’re personalising what the associates know about you to help you find the right product more quickly. You’re going to see digital mannequins that quickly change what they’re wearing based on who you are and what you might be holding in your hand. You’ll see a lot more in-store experiences to help you engage with the product, touch and feel it, and get to know it. But when you go to buy the product, you might not just be grabbing it off the floor and walking out the door like you do today. It might be coming out of the back room, it might meet you in your car, or it might meet you at home.

Snippet from an article written by Praveen Adhi, Eric Hazan, Sajal Kohli & Kelsey Robinson for McKinsey, April 2021

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In my work, I focus on the latter. The problem, when we imagine the future of retail, is that we tend to think about it as retailers. But there are other possibilities. For example, we could look at the most innovative amusement parks and translate that guest experience to the inside of a store or across other channels. Think about all the artistry and science that go into virtual reality, augmented reality, video games, or theme parks like Disney World. There’s a lot of “Imagineering,” as Disney calls it, that has to take place to marry technology with the customer’s experience in special ways that a company can then own and make a part of its brand. What do consumers love about those experiences? What’s the wow factor and how can we re-create it in retail in ways that didn’t exist before? As developers, as retailers, we’re only limited by how much we allow ourselves to break away from the conventional definition of retail itself.

By 2030, 5G will have given way to 6G. We’ll have sensors, computer vision, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, immersive and spatial computing. How can these worlds play together in a way that is almost fantasy-like? Figuring that out takes imagination. It takes experience architecture—a new type of discipline and expertise. I wouldn’t be shocked if the best retailers in 2030 are employing game designers or spatial-computing designers.

In futuristic movies like Minority Report and Blade Runner, a character walks through retail settings and he’s greeted by name; there’s technology that knows who he is and tries to sell him things, and it’s very intrusive. That should give us cues from a design perspective: technology shouldn’t feel intrusive and suffocating. It should just be in the background. Those technological capabilities already exist today. Technically, a retailer could know me by name when I walk into a store. It can know what transactions I’ve made and it can look at other types of data points in real time to know a more inclusive me, a 360-degree me, beyond just what I’ve bought at that store. It can offer me new products and services based on that broader view of me.

Snippet from an article written for McKinsey by Brian Solis from Salesforce, March 2021

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