4 views on the future of retail and the shopping experience

Autonomous checkout tech is too early to make a difference for shoppers in the current pandemic, but as business owners upend their businesses to enable social distancing, there are signs the tech might be ready to make life easier during the next pandemic and the period in between.

Apps like Instacart itself will become key marketing platforms. Instacart is fully aware of this, and is moving quickly to become an ad platform. The top Instacart result becomes the new endcap placement. How long before the algorithm’s out-of-stock replacement suggestion becomes the most hotly contested spot?

Newer/smaller brands will start shifting more efforts to alternative ways of getting in front of new customers; samples bundled into food delivery boxes, “Spend $50 and get a free sample of [whatever new product]!” partnership type stuff.

Established brands and products will see an uptick in customer loyalty/retention. Their job becomes less about convincing the customer to stick with them and more about ensuring that if the customer comes asking for Billy’s Fizzpop, Billy’s Fizzpop is on the shelf — lest the out-of-stock replacement algorithm suggests Doctor Jimbo’s Diet Swish inst... See more

Simple, portable payments solutions attached to major platforms, like Apple Pay, will reduce friction to a minimum. This in turn empowers small vendors at the cost of the likes of Amazon, which still generally requires you to go to it to buy things. That monolith will be tough to topple, but small businesses are going to find out that you can live ... See more

For furniture startups, success might come from investing in virtual staging. For clothing companies, the way to connect might be through virtual styling. If a retail company copycats Echo Look with better branding and improved AI, it could benefit tons of people who are struggling right now.