GfK Retail Conference: Declining sales stagnate, online retailing offers opportunities and challenges
Highlights from the documentation "Retail Trade Switzerland 2018" were presented at this year's GfK Retail Conference. Discussions at the conference revolved around the many challenges facing the industry.
The Swiss retail sector is showing initial signs of stabilization: the year-on-year decline in sales in the Swiss retail sector in 2018 stagnated for the first time since 2014, the downward trend has clearly weakened and the underlying conditions are showing positive signs.
The top 10 list of Swiss retailers has remained unchanged since the previous year. It can be seen that the discounters posted the greatest sales growth of all providers. All three - Denner, Aldi Suisse and Lidl - increased their sales significantly compared with the previous year.
Within the top 10 published companies are seven Swiss companies. More and more international companies want to conquer the Swiss market. The international influence is becoming stronger. In addition, ongoing digitization is one of the biggest challenges in retail. In distance selling - online and mail-order retailing - sales of 9.5 billion Swiss francs were already achieved in 2018 - around 1 billion more than in the previous year. One thing is clear: online volumes are continuing to grow at the expense of bricks-and-mortar retail. Those market players who can efficiently link online and offline, respond quickly to changing customer needs, and successfully master the ever-increasing demands on logistics will prevail.
Shopping is becoming an experience. Stationary retail in particular can benefit from this and take it up accordingly. New approaches to the presentation of goods are already visible in isolated cases. On the other hand, various retailers are already appearing on the market with exciting new omnichannel concepts. The boundaries between brick-and-mortar and online retail are becoming increasingly blurred.
The technological change with its possibilities offers the retail trade completely new ways to interact with consumers and to further simplify their shopping. The desire of consumers for greater involvement is clearly given.
