Latest / The Retail Podcast / NRF 2023 Deliotte 2023 retail industry outlook with Lupine Skelly from Deloitte

Transcript

NRF 2023 Deliotte 2023 retail industry outlook with Lupine Skelly from Deloitte · The Retail Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the retail podcast today with at the
• 0:05
  Deloitte and Google Booth, I'm privileged to be joined by
• 0:08
  Lupin. They re senior retail researcher
• 0:11
  had delight and we're going to be talking about a recent report
• 0:14
  that you put out. So without further Ado, tell us
• 0:17
  about the delay research. So we just put out our 2023
• 0:21
  retail outlook for the report we did surveys with 50 retail
• 0:27
  Executives and we're just kind of trying to understand how are
• 0:30
  they planning for the year ahead.
• 0:31
  Head where they're sort of, you know, thinking about their
• 0:34
  Investments, how they're thinking about the consumer and
• 0:37
  just kind of getting their take on the overall economic
• 0:40
  environment, did you, when you look to the senior execs for the
• 0:44
  retailers? Were they in in specific
• 0:46
  categories in terms of grocery retail?
• 0:49
  Was it a sort of a sample across the whole how to bring in a
• 0:52
  sample across the retail space? We're looking primarily at
• 0:55
  larger companies that kind of represent the white clients boy
• 1:00
  and this is specifically Focus on the US market, right?
• 1:03
  So tell your mom, I'm really curious.
• 1:05
  What are the key sort of take aways from your findings?
• 1:08
  Well, I'd no surprise. But the overall Outlook was
• 1:11
  pretty - just because there's so many had ones this year.
• 1:15
  In terms of inflation. You know, the lingering supply
• 1:18
  chain issues labor obviously is still an issue.
• 1:22
  So you know people were a little bit hesitant and - about 20-23
• 1:29
  in the survey results. We only had a third of the
• 1:32
  retail executive say they were confident and maintaining or
• 1:35
  improving profit margins for the year ahead.
• 1:38
  So people are kind of taking a cautious.
• 1:40
  Look, it was interesting. Did you see the lowest talk this
• 1:43
  morning? Okay, ever.
• 1:45
  The one thing is really interesting for me.
• 1:46
  A lot of the CEOs, I saw of saying that actually.
• 1:50
  It's not going to be as downbeats as people thought.
• 1:53
  Although Christmas was good. The economic outlook for this
• 1:57
  year with the FED raising interest rates is actually going
• 2:00
  to So, slow down the inflation process did in your retail
• 2:06
  outlet. Did you look at inflation and
• 2:08
  interest rates and the impact? And we did this.
• 2:11
  We look at the actual inflation rates and but we were talking to
• 2:15
  the executives about how they were feeling about inflation.
• 2:19
  That was obviously top of mine, we did the survey back in
• 2:23
  November, so a little bit different environment than.
• 2:26
  But I think overall that the their concern is just that the
• 2:30
  consumer might be Feeling the pinch or even just paying
• 2:33
  attention to the media and they're thinking that this is
• 2:36
  happening. And so they were expecting
• 2:38
  consumers to, you know, just be a little bit more cautious and
• 2:41
  was attending focus on for example investment in
• 2:44
  Technologies or Solutions or specific areas of where they
• 2:48
  should look to invest or if they're going to work with
• 2:51
  Deloitte, what would be those areas?
• 2:54
  Yeah. So it was kind of interesting.
• 2:56
  We did a financial analysis sort of the winners in this space.
• 3:01
  During the pandemic and then we also looked at in our survey
• 3:05
  data, you know, who were the leaders and who are the laggards
• 3:09
  and what set them apart and what we found was that, you know,
• 3:13
  digital is going to be a huge investment.
• 3:15
  Those that are kind of in that leading category.
• 3:19
  They are, you know, they're expecting maybe a slight
• 3:22
  downturn but they're preparing for when we get out of that and
• 3:25
  they want to have those investments in place to you
• 3:28
  know, take advantage of that. So what we're seeing is, Big
• 3:31
  investments in digital, and a lot of that was around social
• 3:34
  commerce. They see that as an area.
• 3:36
  That's, you know, real did you just break down what your
• 3:39
  version of social? What your thoughts on social
• 3:41
  commerce are? Yeah, so I think social commerce
• 3:43
  could be any anywhere, where Commerce is happening online, so
• 3:48
  whether that's on video games, whether it's from, you know,
• 3:51
  influencers, that sort of thing. So, they're really seeing that
• 3:55
  as sort of the next level of where did, you know, digital is
• 3:59
  going. So we're seeing a lot of In that
• 4:01
  area, another area. We heard that they were these
• 4:05
  leaders were investing in were in omni-channel capabilities, no
• 4:10
  surprise there. But what would we looked at that
• 4:13
  little more detail. The big part of that was
• 4:17
  investing in Reverse Logistics. So we have seen tens of
• 4:21
  retailers, roll out, you know, curbside pickup, and all these
• 4:24
  omni-channel capabilities. We haven't seen as much on the
• 4:28
  reverse Logistics side. So the the Turn process.
• 4:32
  You know, if you order something online, it's kind of cumbersome,
• 4:35
  right? So sometimes you have to
• 4:37
  repackage it and send it in. You might not get your money
• 4:40
  back for two weeks. So what we're seeing are people
• 4:43
  trying to figure out how to take the friction out and make those
• 4:46
  returns easier. We also have seen that people
• 4:50
  don't do a lot of exchanges online and that sort of a
• 4:53
  opportunity to save a sale. If someone's going to return it,
• 4:56
  why not offer an exchange, send them something directly, you
• 4:59
  know, immediately so that you're not Potentially losing that
• 5:02
  sale. So those are a couple of things
• 5:04
  we're seeing on that omni-channel side.
• 5:07
  And then the other thing we're seeing is just in terms of Last
• 5:14
  Mile opportunities, right? That's been a huge friction
• 5:17
  point and one of the things we're just seeing are the
• 5:20
  leaders in this group are really investing in like micro
• 5:23
  fulfillment center. So they can, you know, just
• 5:26
  expand their Network, get things to people faster, you know,
• 5:30
  we're seeing that people are Are investing in.
• 5:32
  Those are able to get expand their network of customers that
• 5:36
  they can reach in one to two days.
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  That sort of thing. Fantastic.
• 5:40
  Is this something that's published or is this old private
• 5:42
  research? So if I wanted to find out more
• 5:44
  about it, where would I go out? I get the actual my hands on the
• 5:47
  actual data. So we had we do publish it and
• 5:51
  it's out right now it's you can Google it or you can find it on
• 5:55
  deloitte's website but it's the 2023 Deloitte retail Outlook.
• 5:59
  That's wonderful. Thank you so much for giving
• 6:01
  giving me a die. Lovely to meet you Loop in.
• 6:03
  Thanks. giving me a die. Lovely to meet you Loop in.
• 6:03
  Thanks.