Customers expect everything to be close to home
Extensive travel through cities is clearly on the decline. People will expect to work/play/live closer to home. They expect this because it’s safer, but they have also gotten used to the experience.
“I’m feeling drawn away from mainstream retail and attracted to smaller stores. Those stores give the feeling like it’s more of a public space: it’s about knowing the shop owner, that heightened sense of community interaction.”
In urban locations, this could mean decentralized, smaller locations for brands to turn up. – Put your locations where your customers are and don’t make them travel. But since the spaces are smaller, they will not be able to deliver a full brick and mortar offering. For example, we expect to see new store formats for quick pick up and direct services and enough inventory to support localized rush delivery; supported by a distribution center at a larger location. It could also mean building in flexibility in spaces – allowing many functions to occupy the same space at different times to maximize their utility and reduce the amount of travel required. In both of these cases, a digital component to the customer journey needs to fill the gaps left by the full-service IRL offering.
“When tourists stopped travelling and I walked around, massive areas were just empty. They weren’t for me as someone who lives there, and definitely not for my community.”
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