Where Are We Headed? Doug Stephens Discusses The Past, Present, and Future of Retail

Retail Futurist and bestselling author Doug Stephens joins Tiffani Bova—“Innovation Evangelist” at Salesforce—for an enlightening conversation about disruption, the retail experience, and how brick and mortar stores can be the most powerful media channel. 

“For most of history the people that made things were also the people that sold those things,” explains Doug Stephens, otherwise known as “The Retail Prophet.” Then, the industrial revolution hit and forever altered the way we do commerce. We moved from craftsmen and artisans selling their own products, to retailers and brands selling them.

Fast Forward to the early 2000s, brands and retailers controlled the whole equation: pricing, distribution, and product information. “Consumers pretty much lived in a vacuum,” Stephens says. The Internet came along and changed things once again, but it was the advent of mobile that really rocked the system.

As consumers gained access to more information at their fingertips, the power shifted from the hands of the retailer to the hands of the consumers. Brands today find themselves in a position where they no longer call the shots, but are instead directly responding to their customers. Stephens and Bova explore how this big shift has disrupted the industry, and what tomorrow will look like.

Listen to their full conversation here.

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