Retail Week Live 2013: What are this year's big themes?

Retail continues to go through a period of seismic change, full of challenges and opportunities.

This year’s Retail Week Live, held in London on March 13 and 14, promises to be an invaluable source of information and inspiration, with plenty of opportunity to participate in the discussion. Retailers face change in many areas and, while it may be a competitive industry, there is still best practice to be shared and helpful information to be gleaned from peers in other sectors.

Key time for leaders

One particularly pertinent issue is the changing role of retail leaders. Steering a retailer through the uncharted waters of a downturn and changing consumer habits requires more than a steady hand - more is being demanded of executives than ever before.

Headhunter Sally Elliott, senior client partner at Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann, will head a discussion on leadership during Retail Week Live, looking at who’s shaping retail today and the qualities they need to do so.

Elliott says the nature of leadership has changed as retail and the wider business world has shifted.

“We have seen leaders under huge pressure in the past year,” she says. “The political establishment is pursuing a little bit of an anti-business agenda, and retail leaders have always had a relatively public profile even if they are not part of a huge company because consumers engage so much with retailers. So there is a lot of pressure at the moment.”

Elliott says the past few years of turbulence and negative headlines in the business world - most notably in the financial sector but including the tax rows that have embroiled companies such as Amazon - have produced some anti-business prejudice in the wider political atmosphere. “What’s been happening outside retail has created a mood whereby it’s not seen to be as honourable as it once was to be in business,” she says. “Retailers are indirectly affected by that.”

The result is greater scrutiny of businesses across the board, and sometimes of retail leaders.

Additionally, social media and growing consumer power means the qualities of a successful leader have had to change. “Qualities of empathy and engagement have become more important,” says Elliott. “We’ve gone from a situation where it was about giving directions, leading the troops from the top and setting the agenda to a situation where the ability to engage people is more important.”

A different leadership style is now needed, and Elliott will be discussing these issues with Costcutter boss Darcy Willson-Rymer, HMV chief executive Trevor Moore and former Debenhams boss and deputy chairman of the British Retail Consortium Rob Templeman.

Multichannel experience

Another trend that will feature heavily at Retail Week Live is the ubiquitous topic of multichannel retailing. It might have been talked about for years, but it’s only now that many retailers are starting to roll out the projects they’ve been working on. Because multichannel requires so much work behind the scenes, the changes will continue to trickle through for years to come.

Jeremy Michael, managing director of customer experience management consultancy SMG, says some retailers are only now starting to take action on multichannel projects. “A lot of our clients are, for the first time, understanding that the ecommerce team and retail team can work together. Culturally, there has to be a real shift in the business.”

Customer experience

One of the key aims of multichannel initiatives is to improve customer experience, and Michael says this will be another important theme for retail this year. Retailers will need to find a way to make their store experience stand out. “Stores are now finding it difficult to outdo each other on product and price, and customers now believe prices are pretty much comparable wherever you go,” he says. “The one thing that’s actually going to drive customers now is in-store experience.”

Stores today need to be places where shoppers want to go, to spend both time and money. “One of my clients said that if a customer comes into a store, browses and leaves, we’ve failed them,” Michael says. “Whether they spend £10 or £500 they need to enjoy being there.”

He believes that US lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret and pets specialist Pets at Home get it right - both, in their own way, provide the right experience for customers, whether through inspiring stores or knowledgeable, enthusiastic staff.

How to provide this, and another topic likely to be raised at Retail Week Live, is the growing role of business intelligence at retailers. Microsoft group lead for Northern Europe Steve Dunbar says customer information is becoming ever more important, with new technologies coming through this year that will help retailers understand what customers are buying. He says: “Microsoft is evolving technology to provide real-time business intelligence for retailers to improve their customer’s experience”“

At its most advanced, such technology will enable retailers to identify customers before they even get to the store, for example, if they are using a GPS service on their mobile phones and have elected to share location data with a retailer. Once in store, recommendations can be made based on what shoppers are interested in.

Technology has become a more central part of doing business in retail over the past few years, and at Retail Week Live discussions will reflect this - Microsoft itself is running a roundtable looking at how to embed technology deep in a business.

“We aim to help retailers understand in simple terms what technology can bring from a business perspective,” says Dunbar.

Whatever your main areas of interest, Retail Week Live is likely to cover them all. With discussions and presentations on everything from mobile to the evolution of marketing and evolving shopping habits, the event is the most comprehensive of its kind.

Those attending will find themselves at the heart of retail’s big debates and most important discussions, and hear about the world’s most advanced retailing practices - for anyone interested in the future of the industry, it’s a must.