Recent Trends in the Retail Market: Analysis and Recommendations for River Island

This report discusses the recent trends in the retail market and provides analysis and recommendations for River Island, a retail company. It covers the impact of trends such as artificial intelligence, in-store experiences, product customization, and more. The report concludes with recommendations for River Island to stay competitive in the market.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Recent trend analysis. .................................................................................................................1
Analysis and discussion...............................................................................................................2
Recommendations........................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION.
Retail industry has dramatic transformation in last decade. The industry has been
reinvented along with ongoing shift towards online and growing experience economy. Retail
industry is one of the fast growing industry all over world. But the years 2018 has been turbulent
time fore retail companies that effect the as under pay and overwork to employees. The industry
is facing the perfect storm as demand muted and increase cost pressure (Santoro and et.al.,
2018). In this report, the recent trends of retail market will be discussed in context of River
Island ( Retail Company) regarding the issues faced in this sector. The discussion will be
followed up be the recommendation to cope up with challenges effectively and efficiently.
Recent trend analysis.
The retail industry has been evolving through the significant transformation from last
few years. There are advancement of the digital technology in terms of channels up gradation
and market reporting growth in each month year by year. Although after being at such
significant growth, in last few years the retail in facing challenges due to shift in preference and
the emergence of new battle lines of e-commerce.. The industry nowadays have the quickly
evolving customers. The River Island has to adopt the recent trends as to cope with challenges
and fulfil the demand of the quickly evolving customers.
Recent trends are-
Inclusivity in New generation is more diverse and socially aware population along with
change in attitude towards retail. The river island should pay attention towards demand of new
generation by proving the new products and services that have value regardless of particular
background, appearance and tastes. This step will help the company to have increase in potential
customer along with better planning for future (Pantano and et.al., 2017). In Store Experiences
are not popular in recent time as it used to be in the past. But still customers want to have
experience the physical location. The physical store provide a sense of experience to its customer
in terms of quality and comfortability. This will help the River Island to stayed ahead by
embodying this particular trend.
Product Customization is having the classic symbol of luxury which resemble of having
something which no one has. The e-commerce and brick and motor are offering customize
product from monograms and embroidery to fully colour schemes. Visual Search is one of the
recent artificial intelligence retail trend which allows the shopper to search and buy product by
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just snapping a photo. The AI helps to search the similar product across the multiple sites and
there respective retailer just by a single click. This helps the customer having the assurance of
high quality and current asset.
Omni Channel Experiences has made the retailers more consistent regarding the
buying experience across the channels both offline and online. As between the digital and
physical shopping experiences, there is need for the retailer to be agile and responsive regarding
the demand of customer for branded touchpoints. Nowadays , customer are more having the
demand for the private brand label. The retailer is now more investing in private labels as
more compare to branded level. The private labels has more brand legacy in relevant landscape
in case where customer more care about quality ans affordability (Pantano and et.al., 2016).
Through private labels the retailer has more control over design and supply chain to remain
ahead in competitive market. Pop Up Shops is the temporary leverage which rely on scarcity of
principle and the overexcitement that has never been seen in products as to ride experience and
the drives the shoppers to show and buy. Retailer usually have all type of popping store across
country.
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The retailer of country has to majorly identify the recent trends that are prevailing in the
market to have competitive edge . Due to continuous and rapid change in preference of customer
and the rapidly evolving market place environment , there are the key business issues which are
converging and having impact across multiple industry sector. Brands have the leverage on
cognitive computing which used to provide better and faster service to customers and extract
data backed recommendations. The river island has to make the availability of product according
to rapid change in customer demand with implementation of artificial intelligence along with
various channel experience and product customization.
Analysis and discussion
River Island is retail store having expansion indifferent part of the world. The last two
years has be considered tough for retail companies and same for River Island. The companies
has underpaid and overwork employees (Pantano, 2015)
. Due to the change in recent trends the labour market has been tighter and more competitive.
With discussion about recent trends , there are the impacts which relatively impact the business
of companies into retail sector.
The trend of having the artificial intelligence is the visual search give the customer an
advantage to search and buy product by just snapping a photo. The impact of such trend on the
company will be that it will create a level of competitor among the retailer for proving the
preference to customer at shorter end. There will increase in competitor which will have negative
impacts of river island (Mena and Bourlakis, 2016). On the other hand the demand of private
labels turn out to be opportunities for company to penetrate into the market by providing
excellent quality products to their potential customers. The trend of having in store experience
help the customer to have the experience regarding the choice or product and quality offered by
company . The river island offers the customer in store experience as they love the excitement
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of treasure hunts and the discovery of products. River island has identified the major three
experience strategy to bind the customer to productivity of store.
Trend of having the e-commerce in the retailing sector leads to have the choice of the
virtual assistant had voice search in the journey of consumer. The affect of the recent trend on
the company will have been negative as the company has establishment the diligent option for
the customer. The trend of different way patter or the post payment will increase the level of ales
in the retailing sector the company of river island. The customer has the option of payment
through various sources will ultimately leads to have potential customer of larger shopping.
When the customer has the implementation post payment which will surge orders along with
their own personal offerings. The new store tap into market by replicating the same subscription
based model which will results in recurring sales.
Product customization has been identified as the major opportunities to customer of
having classic symbol of luxury which resemble of having something which no one has. This
will turned out as the opportunities for the company to create the potential customer into the
brand loyal one (Jones, Comfort and Hillier, 2017). Providing unique customization of the
product to customer will make the increase in the sales and demand of the company products in
longer run. The company have the change to gain the competitive advantage against the
competitors.
The company should identify the opportunity into the rise of social commerce among the
competitor and use the different social websites to increase the demand of product into market.
There are availability of diffident apps with will help in target the right audience with right ads
at right time. The company can use Facebook and google ad mob to target audience and shoe
video ads between the mobile games intelligently as the ads are less intrusive.
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From the above discussion it can be concluded that the retailer should pay more attention
in having the meaningful human interaction to give confidence to customer along with the latest
technology advancement, distribution models ns assortment strategics. The company river island
gave to be active in hiring and development of staff to remain and retina in competition.
Recommendations
The retail industry is having deep impact of the continuous evolving and rapid changes
in trends and expectation of customer (Gregory, 2015). The river island can have changes in the
organization structure an training and development of the employee so that they can emerge as
trending competitor in market.
River island can have contextual and programmatic advertising in which there are use of
dataset to have the decision over target audience . On the basis of consumption the company will
be shown advertisement to target audience and generate a high level of return. In simple words
company should target the right audience with right ads at right time. The company can use
Facebook and google ad mob to target audience and shoe video ads between the mobile games
intelligently as the ads are less intrusive.
The company can have the use of artificial intelligence to have proper customer along
with identification of pattern in basis of their browsing history . River island can use the
intelligent algorithms form implementation of impersonalization strategies to gain the
competitive advantage (Fernie, Fernie and Moore, 2015). It is recommended that the company
can enter the online mobile commerce as tie increase the mobile transaction a during the holiday
sales season is on. The customers are more exposed to mobile devices as compare to their
personal computer. According to survey it is concluded that the e-commerce shopping with use
of mobile will reach in all time high .
The river island should make the development in the retail structure of company with
implementation d snap and shop. The trend of image shopping will deal with having competitive
advantage into market. Pinterest has launched the own photo camera as to provide proper
product description and partner with a good deal of e-commerce store and top search engines.
The River Island should have the implementation of the subscription based model which will
surge orders along with their own personal offerings (Caro, Kök and Martınez-de-Albéniz,
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2019). The new store tap into market by replicating the same subscription based model which
will results in recurring sales.
The company is recommended to have the localized and personalize customer
experience. This refers to alteration in content of website and identify the customer IP and
provide them with more of contextual merchandising. On the other hand personalization refers
to have personal merchandising with use of various customers' data points and deliver relevant
products. The customer should give experience the exceptional customer service, faster shipping,
lower prices , easy navigation and the increase customer satisfaction.
The river island can build communities, engage with customer and enhance the customer
relationship management. For company, it is difficult to build community and have engagement
with customer (Bogomolova and et.al., 2015). The company is having the obligation to serve
customer relationship management. For that there is need for sum up of customer satisfaction
data. This will help the company to resolve the concern and effect engagement and conversion in
longer period to build up brand loyalty.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that being the dynamic industry in the global world,
the retail industry is facing a large amount of work pressure and competition in the market. Due
to rapid change in the demand of customer has made the dynamic change in structure of retail
industry. The recent trend in retail market have its own pros and cons of the retail business. The
company river island has to take the significant change in structure along with having the
meaningful human interaction to give confidence to customer along with the latest technology
advancement, distribution models and assortment strategics.
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REFERENCES
Bogomolova, S., and et.al., 2015. Price promotion landscape in the US and UK: Depicting retail
practice to inform future research agenda. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. 25.
pp.1-11.
Caro, F., Kök, A.G. and Martınez-de-Albéniz, V., 2019. The Future of Retail
Operations. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management forthcoming.
Fernie, J., Fernie, S. and Moore, C., 2015. Principles of retailing. Routledge.
Gregory, J., 2015. The Internet of Things: revolutionizing the retail industry. Accenture
Strategy.
Jones, P., Comfort, D. and Hillier, D., 2017. A commentary on pop up shops in the UK. Property
Management. 35(5). pp.545-553.
Mena, C. and Bourlakis, M., 2016. Retail logistics special issue. International Journal of
Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. 46(6/7).
Pantano, E. ed., 2015. Successful technological integration for competitive advantage in retail
settings. IGI Global.
Pantano, E., and et.al., 2016. Internet retailing and future perspectives. Routledge.
Pantano, E., and et.al., 2017. Does innovation-orientation lead to retail industry growth?
Empirical evidence from patent analysis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. 34.
pp.88-94.
Santoro, G., and et.al., 2018. Big data for business management in the retail
industry. Management Decision.
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