EKN: 2nd Annual Future of Stores

The role of the brick and mortar store is evolving from being a destination of commerce to being a hub of Omni-channel customer engagement. And, retailers’ “organizational muscle” - a mesh of capabilities including their culture, management adaptability, business processes and technology systems - is under duress from having to dispense a type of customer-centric movement it isn’t trained for. In order to consistently and smoothly dispense an Omni-channel experience to customers, retailers will need to re-train this organizational fiber. EKN’s 2014 Stores Industry Benchmark lays out a framework for how. The report illustrates 4 key properties of stores that retailers will need to transform and key enabling capabilities retailers will invest in to drive the above transformation. Each section contains specific short, medium and long-term recommendations and key data points.