Six themes shaping the future of retail and consumer goods

Winning in today’s retail and consumer goods industry can be summarised by the following: excelling with your people, processes and technology. Inspired by the world’s largest retail conference NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show, we have identified six themes that will shape the future of retail. 

The retail and consumer goods industry is undergoing rapid and profound transformation, driven by changing consumer preferences, technological innovation and global forces shaping the industry. At Implement, we want to stay at the forefront of industry developments. Therefore, we recently attended the world’s largest retail conference in New York – NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show. 

Conversational AI is retail's game-changer in 2024 and beyond

To no one’s surprise, the topic of conversational AI was taking most of the spotlight. Numerous keynotes and on-stage conversations held by industry front-runners and senior executives highlighted some of the key challenges that the world’s leading retailers and brands are facing. 

Generative AI has the potential to transform the retail and consumer goods industry in many ways. By creating new content based on data and models, it has the potential to enhance product innovation and build personalisation, optimise pricing and promotions, improve customer engagement and loyalty and reduce costs and waste. The success of it depends on how you choose to apply it in your company. 

Retail employees and brands typically interact with around 12 tools and systems throughout the day. This may sound like a lot, but when you think about the number of tools and systems you interact with throughout the day, doesn’t it sound about right? 

With AI, we expect to see a continued high rate of new tools, but adding generative AI as a 13th tool to your portfolio is not necessarily the solution to working smarter. Instead, think about how you can implement AI tools horizontally across the organisation – across teams, departments and functional areas. As with many other things, AI should be tied closely to your business strategy and connected to your business goals to support the direction of your company. 

From its breakout year in 2023, we believe 2024 will be the year of adoption, testing and experimenting. We expect that the longer you wait to experiment with AI, the higher the risk of falling behind. Start small but act fast. Start by isolating small data sources that you trust and use them to acquire new learning to improve your business – remember that data quality does not have to be perfect to start experimenting.