Reshaping Retail: Why Technology is Transforming the Industry and How to Win in the New Consumer Driven World

Chapter 2

Technology: The Crucial Retail Enabler

Co-authored with Nina Gillmann

Before turning to the technology-driven changes that lie ahead, it is worth contemplating what technology has already delivered and, importantly, the manner in which it has created value for retailers. This exercise will help distinguish the technology which has long underpinned the prevailing retail business model from the technology which is transforming it.

Technology has long played a pivotal role in retailing. While the retail innovations of the 19th century may seem remote now, the period's early department stores were beacons of modernity and often the first businesses to make systematic use of the latest technologies. They were the Apple flagship stores of their age.

In Paris, the expansion in 1874 of the site on boulevard Haussmann of the first Printemps store saw the introduction of elevators.¹ The store was one of the first to use electricity for illumination, and—significantly for a design that so enthusiastically celebrated modernity—customers were able to view the store's very own power plant from behind a glass wall. Two decades later, the store was able to boast a direct connection to the Métro.

The mastery of innovations such as lighting, cooling, escalation, and elevation was essential for the running of large, modern stores, releasing retailers from the constrained spaces at the front of the ground floors of terraced high street buildings. The stores blossomed into cathedrals of ...