Consumer companies must take leaps, not steps

As shoppers show how quickly they can adapt to external shocks, retailers will need to radically reconfigure their business models.

- Oz Ozturk and Ian Kahn

Not long ago, most people went to work at a workplace — not in their basements or bedrooms. Homeschooling was a rarity. And buying groceries online was something relatively few shoppers were comfortable doing.

What a difference a few months can make. It turns out that people are much more open to change than businesses expected. They’ve rushed online to shop. They are experimenting freely to find what works best for them. And they are proving remarkably adept with technology. “During the pandemic, we’ve seen an unprecedented acceleration of trends that emerged over the past five years,” says Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. “Innovations are taking place in a matter of just months that would normally take years, in areas like acceleration of e-commerce offerings, blending of digital and in-store experiences, curbside pickup and quicker delivery options, and contactless delivery and payments.”

Consumers are not going back. “Post-pandemic, many of these changes may be here to stay,” Shay says. One data point: Almost 90 percent of online grocery shoppers plan to continue buying online when social distancing is no longer required, according to PwC’s 2020 Global Consumer Insights Survey.

If you’re a consumer and retail business leader, you should be hearing an urgent signal in all of this: You must change at least as rapidly and profoundly as the shoppers you serve. You no longer have the luxury of applying tried-and-true transformation techniques. And simply setting up social distancing in the workplace or making tentative digitization moves won’t be enough. It’s time to radically rethink and reconfigure your business model for a perpetually uncertain future — or risk becoming obsolete.