During the pandemic, online shopping skyrocketed and there was a massive acceleration in retail digital transformation. In fact, there’s an argument that digitalization “saved” retail during the height of COVID-19. Addressing this, Parag Shah talked about how data insights helped guide retail giant Walmart’s strategy for its same-day grocery delivery service Walmart+. Using data, Walmart realized that the annual median income of most of its customers was $50k. The retailer doubled down on its digital offering and found success in maintaining its central brand proposition: value.

There is no reversing the trend of e-commerce and digital that’s taken hold, even as the world has adjusted to the realities set over the past several years. Now, GenAI, zero-click search, conversational commerce, and hyper personalization continue to transform retail and CPG. However, there is also a counterintuitive trend underway with retailers opening more physical stores. Surprisingly, even shopping centers are starting to make a comeback.

Amaresh Sahoo shared that Wayfair is embracing this physical retail trend. Earlier this year, the “destination for all things home,” piloted its first brick and mortar store in the Chicago suburbs. Because ecommerce is only 15-20 percent of its Total Addressable Market (TAM), this was a step Wayfair needed to take to stay competitive. By creating an additional touchpoint with customers, Wayfair can drive traffic and boost customer loyalty.

Regardless of the exact balance between digital and physical channels, the important thing for retail and CPG brands is to adopt and embrace an omnichannel mindset. This means enabling customers to purchase through multiple digital and physical touchpoints with a seamless experience. The key to omnichannel is the ability to stitch together both online data and brick-and-mortar data to get the most complete picture of the customer journey through a “halo effect.”

While omnichannel (delivering seamless experiences across all channels) is important, Parag concluded with an interesting concept and said future success for retail and CPG brands is about OPTIchannel. This means reworking your strategy based on the channel your product will be delivered and maximizing the performance and effectiveness of that channel. Whatever the approach, everyone can agree that data and analytics underpins it all.