It’s easy to get enamored by technology and focus there. However, in addition to short-term challenges, such as inflation, staffing shortages, and supply chain failures, there may be other existential forces that are harder to perceive today but will likely become just as material. These forces are competitive, demographic, cultural, political, and even planetary in scope and scale.

So, considering these massive forces, what is the right mix of shopping experience, channels, store formats, brands, service models, and technological wizardry that may work best for your customers and still turn a profit? This is not an easy question to answer, and the right mix will likely vary for every retailer. We hope to provide a deeper understanding of these issues so that retailers can begin to make sense of the choices in front of them.

What we do know is that the consumer, as an individual, should be at the heart of a winning business. As the industry shifts from supply-driven to demand-driven, extrapolating consumer wants, needs, and behaviors should be a north star. Building the future also requires a more complete picture of the new world emerging. It means understanding the full set of forces and their implications on the industry’s markets, models, and mechanics. Those implications can be profound since the six forces we’ve identified, when acting in combination, can create nonlinear change. The convergence of these forces (and their second and third derivatives) is where opportunity likely lives. Perhaps, most fundamentally, it will likely require making choices—including those that may expand the very definition of the industry. No one-sized future will fit all. But we hope this ongoing conversation will equip grocers to manage change and win.

Six forces of change

Over the last 18 months, we engaged with over 800 professionals, industry experts, clients, and consumer industry insiders to explore the future of the consumer. In search of the broader context, we also brought in economists, sociologists, policymakers, and others with unique perspectives and long-range vision. Those efforts yielded six forces we believe are important to understanding the next decade of change.