Evolving Retail Landscape

The retail landscape is evolving – from when and where purchases take place to how consumers actually take possession of the items they buy. This environment is dynamic, with new entrants and changing expectations from week to week (if not day to day). Online merchants are struggling to keep pace and risk failure if their e-commerce capabilities aren’t leading edge and competitive.

Our client, a global transportation provider, is a key partner with these merchants. In order to stay competitive, they are re-thinking the role of e-commerce delivery from both the merchant’s and the consumer’s point-of-view.

Transformation does not come easy. We followed our innovation model, framing our challenge and then empathizing with our targets. Storytelling and affinity mapping were used extensively.

As our idea universe took shape, we identified opportunity areas for deeper development, experimentation, and prototyping. The prototypes were “sketchy” storyboards that conveyed an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format. We took these prototypes back to both merchants and consumers for corroboration , setting priorities for further development. Additional validation with higher fidelity concepts was  also completed.

Ultimately, we identified hundreds of consumer ideas and dozens of merchant ideas. From these ideas, multiple prototypes have been designed and queued for marketplace engagement. Two have already been brought to market, with many of the others awaiting their turn in the development pipeline.