Authored by: Brian Chung, based in Singapore. (edited by Nicki)

Before I talk about the future of retail, let me start by examining the past. Retail once was very simple and straightforward compared to how the industry operates today. The core capabilities required for retailers in the past were solely focused around how to source the maximum number of products cost-effectively, and how to locate and secure the high traffic location to maximize sales.

Then, retailers started thinking about how to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This introduced the concept of merchandising, and how to identifyrelevantproducts (not just many). This required a certain level of analytics, to analyze what products consumers like, how to differentiate products assortments by store locations, how to strategically secure the suppliers, etc.  From this time on, retailers started to scrutinize their operations in a detail level, and I would call this time as the