What decisions should retail leaders start making today?
This article is part of Stravito’s article series, The Next Move, where futurist and marketing expert Maria Selting Theorell explores emerging shifts through a strategic foresight lens, what they could mean for businesses, and prompts the questions teams should be asking now to stay ahead.
TL;DR
- Retailers face growing pressure from market consolidation, tariffs and AI-driven shopping.
- Three emerging shifts could reshape the industry: autonomous commerce, a desire for more authentic experiences and packaging that actively reduces waste.
- These signals are prompts to revisit assumptions, examine what your customers already need and decide where a small experiment could be useful.
- Up next, we will cover food, finance, pharma, and telecoms.
Imagine a future of retail where we simply get it right. What would that world look like?
The retail industry is at a crossroads, facing many pressing macro trends at once. Can the industry redefine value before disruptors and shifting consumer expectations outpace it?
Envision a future where every detail – from physical packaging and freight to consumer interactions – serves a purpose beyond the retail purchase transaction.
We’ve removed inefficiencies, waste and logistics that neither serve our wellbeing, our planet, nor our top-line revenues. Storage, waiting lines, and unpaid household labor are replaced by optimized deliveries from local suppliers. Unnecessary packaging is a thing of the past, and the retail industry has transitioned to a fully circular system in tune with our planet.
A thriving second-hand market has given rise to new, even more profitable, leasing-as-a-service business models, where you can rent a designer bag for the evening or use a lawn mower for just a few hours. It turns out that the green transition was good for business, too.
What used to be large storerooms have been changed into experiential showrooms, taking you to Italy, outer space, or a culinary chocolate tasting. Instead of spending time stocking shelves, store staff now build meaningful interactions with customers and loyalty that lasts.
Does it sound completely out there? Or tempting? While we are certainly not there today, it all starts with imagining possible futures before we can work towards them.
In this article, we’ll deep-dive into three signals that may indicate that some aspects of this future scenario could become a reality – if successful pioneers lead the way.
I asked foresight experts Mark Bünger and Cecilia Tham from Futurity Systems, Maria Åkerlund from Inter IKEA Group, and Michell Zappa from Envisioning to share one signal each they believe could impact the future of retail – and how retailers can turn these into opportunities. Because the future is defined by those who spot signals early and act on them.
But before we dive into future-gazing signals, what are some of the macrotrends impacting the retail industry right now?
Three key macrotrends now impacting the retail industry
Bob Hoyler, Global Insight Manager at Euromonitor International, highlights three key macrotrends impacting the retail industry:
1. The industry is splitting between big brands and direct-to-consumer niche brands
The world's top ten retailers accounted for 19% of global retail sales in 2025, up from 11% in 2015 – while brands below the top ten face declining sales. In other words, the biggest players are getting even bigger1.
Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are growing, expected to account for 9% of all e-commerce sales in 20262. DTC brands that own their own channels can collect first-party consumer data, offering a level of niche personalization other retail models can’t match. The mid-tier retail brands are left increasingly exposed.
Question for leaders: As data protection laws strengthen across the world and become the norm, how can we collect first-party data from our customers, allowing for future personalization?
2. Tariffs are spreading, benefiting strong brands while putting low-cost models at risk
Cross-border retail e-commerce reached USD 432 billion in 2024, with the US leading inbound sales largely due to the de minimis tariff exemption (duty-free low-value imports). When the US removed this in 2025, cross-border sales growth dropped from 14% in 2024 to 9% in 20253.
As trade protectionism spreads to other markets such as Japan, the EU, and the UK, cross-border e-commerce is shifting away from low-cost models toward brand- and demand-driven ones. This exposes low-cost players like Shein and Temu, while companies with stronger brands, customer trust, and loyalty will be better positioned.
Question for leaders: How exposed are we to tariff changes? How can we build brand loyalty to compete in a more regulated market?
3. SearchGPT: Generative AI platforms will boom as referral sources
While GenAI platforms only accounted for 3% of inbound referrals in 2025, that number grew by 304% last year. GenAI is expected to account for 8% of referrals by the end of 20264.
Related Stravito story → Read more about how your brand can build trust and show up more in AI-assisted search in Stravito's CMO Trend Report.
GenAI platforms are emerging as the new front door to retail, evolving from general-purpose assistants into high-intent shopping gateways. Retailers now need to guide both consumers and AI algorithms through the decision-making journey as GenAI redefines online product search.
Humans respond to emotions, while GenAI responds to structured data, meaning clear and consistent product info ready for machines to interpret.
Question for leaders: Who is in charge of making sure we structure our digital product content for AI platforms to understand, rank, and recommend our products, so we don’t become invisible in AI-driven shopping journeys?
“While the retail industry is facing many different structural shifts, e-commerce will still be the primary driver of global sales growth in 2026. Euromonitor projects that retail e-commerce sales will grow by 7% in 2026, and online sales are projected to account for 75% of all absolute value growth in global retail from 2026 to 20305.
E-commerce is changing, but it is still the primary growth driver. In fact, in 2025, South Korea became the first country in which the majority of retail sales value was transacted online (52%), providing a glimpse of an era in which digital shoppers define the future of retail 6.”
– Bob Hoyler, Global Insight Manager at Euromonitor International
Related Stravito story → Read more about the macrotrends and potential developments shaping the future of consumer behavior in The Next Move.
Macrotrends tell us where retail is currently heading. Signals give us hints of possible future shifts and trends before they’ve taken shape.
But signals themselves don't tell us what to do. The value comes from using current signals to imagine future scenarios, and then making active, conscious decisions based on various degrees of likelihood and potential business impact. Doing these exercises helps leaders ask better questions and identify where early experimentation could create an advantage. Connecting signals with companies' own internal data and customer intelligence can help enterprises decide which ones to act on today.
Three emerging signals retail companies can turn into opportunities
1. Autonomous commerce will push retail to go experiential to survive
Cecilia Tham, CEO, and Mark Bünger, CTO, Futurity Systems
| Signal Area: Technical |
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What? Investments in robotics will fuel an era of autonomous commerce Electronic commerce (eCommerce) and mobile commerce (mCommerce) changed many industries, eliminating entire categories while creating new ones. While they were digital, they had a physical impact on goods, spaces, logistics, and consumption. Now, autonomous commerce (aCommerce) promises to bring the same scale of revolution. Autonomous vehicles, dark warehouses, sidewalk bots, delivery drones, and humanoid robots are today where the internet was in 1995 – or smartphones in 2010 – clunky and expensive compared to current transport methods. But they are rapidly improving. According to McKinsey, investments in robotics tripled between 2023 and 2025, and the technology is quickly advancing as commercialization accelerates. As eCommerce shifts to aCommerce, the store will come to you, down to the very last step, and opening hours will be irrelevant. “Instantaneous" access will become the norm. |
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So what? Frictionless shopping can be a win for everyone, driving engaging in-person shopping experiences Retail stores must mark up wholesale goods significantly–often 100%–in order to provide a physical space for customers to shop and purchase goods. If retail on wheels can deliver goods straight to households based on optimized schedules, it’s a win not only for retailers, saving money on stores and labor, but also for households, which spend 30+ hours of unpaid labor per month on shopping and transportation (predominantly by women). In addition, cars sit idle more than 95% of the day. If autonomous vehicles operate even 25% of the time, the same transportation could be performed with 20% as many cars on the road, saving us precious time spent driving and megatons of carbon dioxide7. In a future of autonomous, frictionless logistics, physical shopping will favor only the engaging, in-person shopping experiences worth visiting. Retailers will save money, households will save time, and we’ll produce vastly fewer emissions. |
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Now what? Start experimenting with robots before your competitors outrun you Companies whose revenue and costs are tied to space, place, and transportation should start modeling how autonomous logistics will impact their industry. Test robots based on volume, weight, cost, and urgency – to understand which robots work best for what goods. Companies can start asking their customers which products or services are the most appealing for aCommerce. Leaders should also visit places where aCommerce is a reality. For example, ride a Waymo in San Francisco, get a drone-delivered coffee in Shenzhen or Dublin, or try a self-driving 7-Eleven in Tokyo. Then map that back to your geography. |
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Question for leaders: What customer evidence would justify investing in automation today rather than waiting three years? What in-store experiences could we design that are so engaging that customers would go out of their way to visit us? |
What evidence should you look for?
Before jumping into actions, ask:
• Are our customers already showing this behavior?
• Which customer segments would adopt this first?
• What research do we already have?
• What assumptions might become outdated?
• Where should we run a low-risk pilot?
2. Imperfection is the new black–and a creative opportunity
Maria Åkerlund, Strategic Foresight Leader, Inter IKEA Insights team
About Inter IKEA group: Inter IKEA Group is the group of companies that connects IKEA franchisees with range development and suppliers, and aligns the overall IKEA strategic direction. All to create a better everyday life for many people.
| Signal Area: Social |
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What? Searching for imperfection and realness in a world of perfection In a world of deepfakes and GenAI/synthetic blandness, there seems to be a counter-reaction and a need for more real experiences with all their flaws and uniqueness. Imperfect experiences that create deeper emotions and are truly relatable are getting attention. In essence, it’s about offering experiences that are more human than artificial. For example, Icelandair ran a campaign seeking Iceland’s worst photographer. Fuckup Nights Global hosts evenings to celebrate failures. And water-smart native gardens are catching on as a real, ecological alternative to picture-perfect lawns. |
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So what? How we build customer trust and the symbols we use will change People are increasingly less confident that they can trust what they see online. At the same time, they are increasingly drawn to things that express vulnerability, locality, imperfection, constraint, ecological fit, and lived experiences. As it becomes harder and harder to trust what we see online, I believe this signals a change in how we verify what is true and what is not. Physical experiences and human verification will become more important, as will how we build trust between people. The need for authenticity is not new, but what is new here is the semiotics – i.e., the symbols and signs we use – to judge what is real in this world of AI, deepfakes and synthetic content. |
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Now what? Introduce failures and imperfections that make your experience unique This shift will change how we design experiences, making them feel more real and relatable, rather than utopian or too perfect. Retailers can bring imperfection to life in both online and offline experiences. For example, an in-store “Failure Wall” showcasing discontinued items and the honest stories behind them. Retailers could use transparent signage to explain price hikes or rough-looking produce: “This week, our bananas look rougher because our supplier had a storm. Here’s the story. Why not make banana pancakes this week?” This calls for a deeper understanding of real-life contexts and greater collaboration with local partners to build nuanced trust and authenticity. It might mean rethinking work culture: celebrating failures and learning from our mistakes, not just perfect results. Where do we overpolish? How can we show we’re truly human? |
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Question for leaders: In what parts of our shopping experiences, marketing and customer interactions can we build trust by creatively celebrating imperfection? Which customer behaviors are already telling us authenticity matters more than polish? |
3. Could packaging that does a job become the new norm?
Michell Zappa, Founder + CEO, Envisioning
About Envisioning: A technology research institute that maps how emerging technologies and trends reshape industries and society. For over a decade, companies, institutions, and governments have used their signal-based foresight to make sense of complex change and build future-ready strategies.
| Signal area: Technological, Environmental |
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What? Packaging that extends shelf life and signals freshness The world threw away 1.05 billion tons of food in 2022. As a response to the enormous food and packaging waste, innovations in packaging that do something are emerging. Active packaging (oxygen and moisture scavengers) extends shelf life from inside the pack. Intelligent packaging signals true freshness rather than a printed guess: Mimica's "Touch" label, adjusted to spoil at the same rate as the product, stays smooth when fresh and turns bumpy when it isn't. Evigence's FreshSense time-temperature sensor reports approximately 20% shelf-life extension and 33% waste reduction. The active-and-intelligent packaging market is expected to grow from $15 to $41bn by 2035. |
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So what? Packaging as a function could become the norm The printed "use by" date is static and conservative, applied to the entire production batch regardless of how any individual pack was actually handled. In effect, it’s a deliberate overestimate that sends edible products to the bin. Freshness-sensing packaging replaces that guess with a live, per-item signal, reducing waste and securing food safety. Dairy products could have an extra three days of shelf life. Leaders who ignore this miss out on one of the largest controllable loss pools in groceries. Adoption is, for now, concentrated in high-value perishables like meat, fish, and dairy. But as smart packaging grows and consumer expectations shift, retailers across industries should ask themselves: Is our packaging serving any purpose beyond just packaging? |
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Now what? Smart packaging could fulfil many different future purposes As costs fall, customer awareness increases, and technology matures, the potential for active and intelligent packaging reaches far beyond food. For example, in the electronics industry, packaging could indicate whether a product experienced shock or heat in transit. In beauty or pharma, smart seals could confirm whether the product has been stored under optimal conditions. Warranties could be activated at the moment of unboxing. The packaging itself could be transformed into something useful, like a plant that grows from seed papers. While the biggest gains in the short run are to be found in the food industry, this is a signal that the packaging budget itself is shifting from passive material to embedded function. Retailers who treat packaging as an innovation platform can capture future value by pioneering solutions that save money, create customer value, and benefit the planet at once. |
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Question for leaders: |
Staying alert, and agile
It’s time to come back to 2026. What are you thinking? Has this spurred any new ideas, or do you think that things like autonomous commerce driven by robots are too far off in the future?
Either way, maybe you should pay the future a visit by booking your next vacation at this Robot Ranch – a resort where all hospitality services from check-in, cleaning, bartending, to dancing entertainment are run by humanoid robots. As the saying goes: the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.
Some signals are strong and highly relevant in the short run and some signals are weak and remain speculative in nature. No signals come with instructions.
Instead, they help us ask better questions, challenge existing assumptions, and identify where early experimentation could create future advantage.
The organizations that succeed in the future will be those who stay alert, agile and act on the signals relevant to them.
Listening and acting on signals may mean making a bet. But not listening at all to signals in a world that’s changing at hyper-speed is far riskier.
What’s next in 'The Next Move'?
In the next article, we’ll cover changes impacting the future of food and FMCG.
Notes
1 Euromonitor International Passport: Retail, 2026 edition
2 Euromonitor International Passport: Digital Shopper, 2026 edition
3 Ibid.
4 Euromonitor International Passport: E-Commerce
5 Euromonitor International Passport: Retail, 2026 edition
6 Ibid.
7 Estimate based on vehicle utilization: If 100 conventional cars are in motion 5% of the day, they collectively provide 120 vehicle-hours of transportation per day (100 × 24 hours × 5%). If autonomous vehicles operate 25% of the day, 20 vehicles could provide the same 120 vehicle-hours (120 ÷ 24 hours ÷ 25%), equivalent to 20% of the original fleet.
| Executive self-reflection questions |
| 1. Which one of these signals will matter most to our bottom line in 1, 5, and 10 years from now? What’s the biggest risk if we bet wrong? |
| 2. How can we make every part of our retail experience serve a purpose? |
| 3. How might our current structure or culture prevent us from acting on these signals? What do we need to change to become future-ready? |
| 4. If we were starting this business from scratch today, which one of these signals would we make our core advantage? |
| 5. Who on our executive team is accountable for making sure we follow, monitor, and act on our most relevant signals? |
| 6. How can we reimagine our future retail model to serve human well-being, the planet, and our bottom line? |
| 7. What’s the one thing we believe today that, if proven wrong, will hurt us the most? |
Maria Selting Theorell is a futurist, tech philosopher, fractional CMO and strategic marketing consultant to Stravito. See more about her here.
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