2010 - The Year of Transparent Retailing

It's very tempting to try to declare that 2010 will be the year of the mobile consumer. However, I think 2010 will see the real beginning of something bigger, and that is "transparent retailing."
By transparent, I mean retailers will have to provide consumers with more access, at a more granular level, to more information about their operations and how consumers fit into those operations. It might be as simple as providing consumers with searchable, analyzable purchase history online, or as complex as providing the carbon footprint of products or processes. It might come from the mobile channel, through price or availability comparisons, or from the online channel around product reviews or ratings.
There are three trends at play that will converge in 2010, I believe, that will force retailers into more transparent retailing:

1. The pursuit of green. Consumers want to know what retailers and manufacturers are doing to build more sustainable practices and products. But as soon as you start talking to consumers about what you're doing, you need to be prepared for full disclosure, lest someone dig something up or call something out, and the legitimacy of your efforts is undermined. It requires an as-yet-to-be-determined level of transparency into operations, and, increasingly, into the operations of trading partners.
2. Supply chain visibility. Speaking of trading partners, one of the highest areas of interest coming out of 2009, according to RSR's research, is supply chain visibility. When you know where an item it is, and how much it costs to get it where it needs to be, retailers can make much more intelligent supply chain decisions. When you couple that capability with not just demand-sensing but demand-shaping capabilities thanks to price optimization, now you have a level of granularity and control that is unprecedented in retail. We won't get this in 2010, but the path to it will lead to much greater product granularity in the next year.
3. Greater use of customer data. Retailers have long been pursuing customer centricity initiatives, but in 2008-09, the importance of these initiatives came home with a vengeance. In an economic singularity, demand forecasts are near-useless - but customer insights, and advance insights into shifting customer behavior, became priceless. As consumers altered their purchase habits, retailers needed to be on top of any hint of defection behavior. In 2010, retailers are still struggling to understand the "new" consumer, and to convince abandoners to come back.

Take all three of these trends and wrap them around customer expectations. As a consumer, I expect to have access to the same capabilities and information in one channel that I can get from another. I expect to be able to compare prices, products, reviews, availability, and more, not just across channels but across retailers. I expect to be able to understand how the products you sell impact my life and my world.
If you make your margin by exploiting some kind of information advantage over your customers - whether that's knowing the fair price when your customers don't, or product quality issues that you're not being up front about, or even whether you have more of an item available or not (or if your competitors do) - I have a feeling the next year is going to be tough. And the next decade even tougher.

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from Retail Paradox, Retail Systems Research's weekly analysis on emerging issues facing retailers.
Original post here