Retail Operations in a Purpose-Led World: Key Insights from the IDC European Retail Executive Digital Summit 2022

This IDC Perspective recaps key insights from the IDC European Retail Executive Digital Summit 2022, held on September 22, 2022. Retailers are facing the challenges of increasingly demanding customers, greater accountability toward society, growing competitive pressure, and tighter margins. Companies are caught between a rock and a hard place as adverse macroeconomic factors reduce margins and sales expectations. Changes in consumer behavior translated into more demanding customers. In this environment, differentiation becomes key, and purpose-led retail is now more important than ever. During the summit, participants discussed how purpose-led retail is evolving and how it translates into retail and CPG companies' key operational priorities in today's omni-channel environment, addressing customer experience, employee experience, the new role of the physical store, online-offline integration, and logistics and fulfillment."Operating with a sense of purpose becomes key for retailers to define who they are and what they stand for in the eyes of customers, partners, competitors, and society. Purpose is a key message with multiple implications as it determines how retailers should run key omni-channel operations pillars such as customer and employee experience, online-offline integration, and logistics and fulfillment capabilities," said Filippo Battaini, research manager at IDC Retail Insights.