Retail 2.0: The Coming Up of a New Era for Retail Business in the 21st Century

Abstract

Retail was born in 1879 with the first Five & Dime Stores. 130 years after, we still live in the era of Retail 1.5, this means, no real Quantum Leap was made in Customer Experience. However, we strongly believe that, starting half of the first decade of the 21st Century, a new Retail Era began. This change is due to the fact that, not only Classic Retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour started to look to the Persona, instead of a Person among Persons, but also eCommerce Retailers, such as Amazon or eBay showed that eCommerce Retail it’s more than a Start-Up, which is something that we can observe by the continued and sustained Double Digit Revenue growths year after year. Social Retail hit the mainstream, when Time Magazine awarded Social Shopping Experience as one of the Best Inventions of 2007. The objective of the present study is to understand what have been done in the field of New Customer Experiences since the beginning of the Classic Retailers, and try to devise what will be the strategic implications for the future, arising from the changes foreseen in the field of retail business. The authors will emphasize the emerging new Trends, and try to foresee what in Social Retail and Online / Shop Customer Experience could be the mainstream for the next decade.