Elin at Management Events invited Matthew to its future of retail event, held in person in Stockholm, where brands ranging from Ikea to Volvo came together to discuss the future of consumer behaviour, e-commerce, sustainability and more.
His session combined a keynote, The Future of Retail Re-Invented, with a panel. He took the audience across the next decade, to a future where Amazon and others are fully autonomous retailers, from product design to final fabrication and fulfilment from dark warehouses, and where e-commerce itself has been re-invented by technologies from the metaverse to voice.
"When it comes to retail the only thing that's changing is everything, whether it's the emergence of Robo-Customers or the evolution of Direct to Consumer to Direct to Avatar."Matthew Griffin, Stockholm, June 2022
He then explored alternative sales channels, including voice and conversational AI and digital humans, and showed how Web 3.0, the Metaverse and related technologies such as crypto, NFTs and tokens will change not only how we buy products and services, but who we buy them from.
For retail, he argued, the only thing changing is everything: from the emergence of Robo-Customers to the evolution of Direct to Consumer into Direct to Avatar. And that was before the discussion even reached the circular economy, sustainability and the many other shifts reshaping how and where people shop.
