What to expect in retail in 2022

What’s the most basic rule in retail? The customer is always right. And right now, shopper expectations are transforming. After tasting and liking the home delivery of groceries during the pandemic, the race is now on to bring that level of convenience to just about everything. Retailers worldwide are partnering with restaurant food delivery services like Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Dunzo to cater for the ultra-fast delivery of just about anything directly from their store networks.

But retailers need to be careful. When people are less inclined to visit a retailer’s expensive real-estate, then delivery becomes the new store. Doorstep service is how your brand is increasingly experienced. To get greater control over that experience, watch in 2022 while all major food retailers create their own branded rapid delivery offers, like Tesco’s Whoosh. And look out for this trend extending into other retail sub-sectors, such as homewares and fashion.

After the hype, we’re now ready for frictionless, queue-free shopping. It will not reach mainstream proportions in 2022 but it is snowballing in importance. All tier-one retailers have run trials and moved on to live pilot stores where customers scan their phones to enter and pick their shopping from the aisles, as usual. Sensors detect each customer’s choices, attach them to a basket on the phone and payment is taken a few seconds after the customer leaves the store.

I predict that queue-free shopping will rapidly spill over from food retailing into other high footfall domains – such as sports and music stadia, and high-capacity canteens in education. Further categories ripe for this are ticketing sales for rail and other forms of transport, plus major sandwich stores in city centers where there is always a rush at peak times.