Trend consultants: business advisors guide retailers into the future - The Power Players

Discount Store News, Dec 4, 1995

Several business and lifestyle consultants exert a major influence on the way retailers position their companies.

For example, Faith Popcorn coined the term "cocooning" to describe American consumers' bunker mentality and search of a safe haven at home from outside chaos. As a Target consultant, she looked at Dayton Hudson's program of giving 5% of pretax profits to charity each year and suggested that the company do more to publicize its position as a giving company." As a result, Target has greatly improved its image as a company that enhances the lives of the families in the communities it serves.

Like Popcorn, Carol Farmer analyzes the world of politics, lifestyles, art, entertainment and attitudes to help retailers see the big picture. Her current message: There is an unstoppable drive in the world today to get more for less.

Farmer also says that retailers face a double-edged sword. They are used to selling to Baby Boomers. Now to be successful they must sell to aging Boomers and a new generation of Xers, an imposing task unless "you are selling commodities at the lowest possible price," she says.

Farmer and Popcorn, along with John Naisbeth ("Megatrends" and Re-Inventing the Corporation, Global Paradox") and Alvin and Heidi Toffler ("Future Shock" and "The Third Wave") are the leading futurologists upon whom many retailers depend to identify trends and uncover growth opportunities.

In addition to these pop-culture futurists, there are scores of other firms that, for a fee, vie to help retailers solve their problems. Some of the more influential consultants: * Andersen Consulting operates a retail laboratory in Chicago called The Retail Place where it advises its clients to "rediscover the customer, reinvent the workforce, rejuvenate the store and redirect effort toward value." * McKinsey and Company has played a role in helping Kmart redefine its merchandising mission and is currently helping Venture address a merchandising strategy, with two programs: Image Creator and Basket Filler. For Venture, this was the seed of the new Category Dominance plan. * Design Forum, Dayton, Ohio, is used by many mass merchants for its innovative store layouts, signage and fixtures. * Management Horizons, noted for its "the discount store is dead" prediction a few year ago recently its report, "Retailing 2005," which looks at major changes expected in the food, drug and mass retail sector between now and the year 2005. "Food, drug and mass retailing are dominated by formats that have reached or passed their prime." says Tom Rubel, managing Partner: "We see slow, no or negative growth in most of those channels."

Others to note: * Professor Doug Tigert's annual Babson College research studies have set benchmarks for identifying major retail industry trends like warehouse clubs, super-centers and consumer electronics superstores. * Walter Salmon has educated any industry leaders with his Harvard Business School program. * Willard Bishop has helped the supermarket industry enter the 20th century (just in time for the 21st century); * Gene Hoffman came up with a workable supercenter concept for a struggling Kmart and is a major proponent of leadership development. * Jim Degan monitored and defined the club concept from its earliest stages.

One point to ponder: consultants don't always agree. A recent study by Andersen Consulting reports that non-store retailing will grow to more than half of the total GAF sales by 2010. A similar study by Deloitte & Touche describes interactive retailing as a minimal threat to store-based retailers.

Who do you believe?