Navigating the New Retail Landscape: A Guide for Business Leaders

The retail industry globally is in an era of profound, perhaps unprecedented, change. This book is intended to serve as a wide-ranging, robust, practical guide to leaders of enterprises tasked with understanding and delivering success in the new landscape of retailing, as well as to all those with an interest in this most important and visible of industries.

Part 1 describes the major directions and drivers of change that define the new global landscape of retailing. Accelerating changes in technology, the rise to prominence globally of internet enabled shoppers and the rapid emergence of entirely new retail enterprises and business models are combining to re-shape the very fundamentals of the retail industry. The new landscape of retailing is unforgiving: success can be achieved more quickly than ever before but failure is equally rapid. Opportunities in the new landscape of retailing are profound, but so too are the challenges. Part 2 discusses the structures, skills, and capabilities that retail enterprises will need if they are to be successful in this new landscape and the skills and capabilities required of the leaders of retail enterprises.

Thirty detailed case studies of innovative and successful enterprises internationally and more than one hundred smaller examples, all updated and many entirely new since the first two editions of this book, are used to illustrate the themes discussed. Frameworks are presented to provide practical guidance for enterprise leaders to understand and contextualize the nature of change re-shaping retail landscapes globally.

Alan Treadgold, Founding Partner, Candezent Advisory, Jonathan Reynolds, Associate Professor in Retail Marketing & Deputy Dean, Said Business School, University of Oxford

Alan Treadgold has held senior positions in advertising, management consulting, and academic institutions globally, including CEO IdeaWorks (a WPP business) in Australia; EVP and Global Head of Retail for Leo Burnett advertising; Partner and Retail Lead, PA Consulting; CEO Australian Centre for Retail Studies (ACRS), Monash University, Melbourne. He began his career at the Oxford Institute of Retail Management (OXIRM) and holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford for his research into innovation diffusion theory. He advises a range of retail, consumer products, and technology companies globally.

Jonathan Reynolds is Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management (OXIRM) and Deputy Dean of the Saïd Business School. He is one of the leading academic experts in the study of the retail sector internationally. Jonathan’s teaching and research focuses primarily on the retail sector, and he is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading academics in this field. He is particularly recognised for his scholarship and expertise in the areas of electronic commerce and omni-channel retailing, innovation and entrepreneurship in retailing, retail productivity and skills, and the role of place in marketing and retail management.