The Future Of Retail Is Digital

Buying stuff used to be so easy. Customers walked into a shop, paid for whatever they wanted to buy, and left.

- Ong Xiang Hong

But now, the Internet has changed the way we engage with retailers. In turn, the advent of e-commerce has also enabled retailers to change the way they operate. The retail industry, for better or worse, is now forever changed by e-commerce and its connectivity.

For Asia, the rise of e-commerce has had a profound effect. It has the world’s highest rate of Internet shopping and the fastest growth in overall sales, according to research done by Bain & Co. Vast communities of consumers, retailers and partners are rapidly reshaping the entire retail landscape, forcing retailers to just as quickly make some fundamental decisions.

In other words, the hyper-competitive retail market in Asia forces retailers to innovate or die. Amazon may have launched the world’s first proprietary ecosystem, but the concept has so far generated its biggest momentum in China, where Alibaba and Tencent have within a few short years built open variants of the ecosystem—with features uniquely tailored to Chinese consumers.

This concept has also made its way to Southeast Asia, with channels like Lazada, Shopee, Qoo10, and a host of other regional players vying for a slice of the digital retail pie.

In this issue of SME, we take a look at what the future of digital retail holds, and how retailers can

OMNI EVERYTHING

The scale of change taking place within the retail industry is phenomenal. Things that just a couple of years ago we thought impossible are fast becoming reality. This is partly due to access to unprecedented computing power, near-limitless data, and AI to make sense of it all, plus, through visual and voice computing interfaces, the ability to absorb and process information in a way that once was purely the domain of humans.