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

Inquiry Based
Learning

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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