Adam Baker - Marketing Strategy Manager - Bord Bia, Irish Food Board
Often businesses spend too much of their time focused on past performance and assessing what has happened already. This means that in today’s dynamic landscape they can quickly get left behind. It’s therefore critical to be future focused.
So what are some of the retail trends in 2019 that will enable companies to be future focused?
According to the IGD these are the major trends in 2019 retail:
- Data dictates the way- with the empowered consumer comes an expectation of information availability, whether by peers, or by the brand itself. Companies must transparent with everything about their product, and their business. Carrefour has recently extended its blockchain food tracing to chicken, tomatoes and now milk giving consumers the data needed for full supply chain transparency to right down to GPS co-ordinates for the farm. And in Italy, Italian retailers “Il Viaggiator Goloso” have launched their first product reviews on digital tags.
- Help me be healthy – Trends towards specialist diets are set to continue and more widely retailers are investing in cleaner private label ranges, considering different product attributes.Nightfood is an American ice cream formulated by leading sleep and nutrition experts with sleep in mind.
- Doing good is business – Strategic shifts towards sustainable food ranges has developed positive public images for brands and has increased collaborations with non-traditional business partenrs in NPD. P&G is raising the bar with a new waterless, plastic-free homecare brand DS3 which aims to significantly reduce impact on the environment.
- Seamless stores – Retailers are looking to build an omni-channel shopping experience, building reputations across channels and maximising reach through partnerships. This is prevalent with the increase of online and out of store shopping options for consumers but embedding technology in store and making shopping more convenient at every touch point is helping to maximise (and return shopping) the appeal of physical stores.
- Anytime, anywhere – Online, the growing trend to satisfy immediate needs can encourage seamless impulse shopping. Retailers are now more aware than ever of purchasing ques and how to tie their product and retail offers in with offline prompts, becoming more flexible around events, time of day, news and culture.
Becoming future focused, and altering your strategy for the environment in which you compete can help you to accurately analyse your complete market situation, and enables you to make intelligent choices on deciding where to focus. This is a huge part of developing and validating a successful Commercial Marketing Strategy, the other elements of which are available on www.plantogrow.ie
References:
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/carrefour-blockchain-food-traceability-milk/
https://www.ses-imagotag.com/en/viaggiator-goloso/