Meet Today’s Super Consumer: She’s Redefining The Future of Shopping

We are in the midst of a technological revolution affecting everything about the shopping process: the simultaneous explosion of social, mobile and local technologies. It is in these transition points where our business decisions have the most impact—where companies are made and lost. Our true fundamental strengths—compared against our partners and competitors—must be considered in the context of an entirely new shopper: the Super Consumer.

With a multitude of resources at her fingertips, the Super Consumer can shop five stores at once through a multi-tabbed web browser. Smart phone in hand, she walks down the aisle of one store while teleporting a sales representative from another store, in order to shop competitively.  She is fearless and opinionated, posting her shopping experiences to the blogosphere and social media channels. Thanks to the plethora of user-generated product reviews, recommendations and detail specifications already available, her knowledge is practically limitless. She knows much more than the store employee by the time she’s ready to buy.

Empowered by unprecedented access and connectivity, the Super Consumer has the unique power to redefine brands from the bottom-up, and drive the creation of new markets, new products, technological innovations, social media activities and general consumption.

It’s imperative for retailers and brands to understand the Super Consumer, how she shops and –most importantly – what makes her happy.

Beginning today in London and upcoming in New York (6/14) and Stanford University (9/18), Paco Underhill and I will be speaking about the macroeconomic and technological trends shaping this new Super Consumer and how we in retail need to hearken back to our roots in merchandising and marketing so that we can define our strategies on a battlefield increasingly shaped by rapidly growing players such as Groupon, Amazon, and even eBay.

Please join us as we discuss The Future of Shopping.