Department Stores Need a Makeover

The Great Global Recession fundamentally changed the future of retail. It wasn’t the beginning of a behavioral shift; it was the end. The crisis may be over but the implications are not – especially for department stores, Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail, said in her keynote address at the Global Department Store Summit’s opening session.

“Shoppers are now bloody-minded. Distrusting. Practical. In control. Many have changed where they shop and how—first through necessity; now through choice. They have gone from regretting what they couldn’t afford to accepting what they can. Less is more now, and it’s OK,” Liebmann continued.

“The emerging retail world may look familiar, but it is not. New technologies mean that familiar department store territory is being transformed: service, exclusivity, access have all been redefined. The change is real and not going away any time soon. Department stores will be enormously challenged in this new environment. They must invent, yes invent, themselves if they are to succeed,” she added.

Liebmann identified “8 ½” steps department stores must take to do just that:

1. Restate worth
2. Think small
3. Reframe value
4. Embrace the internet
5. Innovate discounting
6. Reinvent service
7. Romance the brand
8. Seize the white spaces
8 1/2. Be bold or fail

Ms. Liebmann’ s presentation reveals the new findings and insights from WSL Strategic Retail’s 2010 How America Shops Megatrends Study, The Odyssey Begins to the New Retail World, including newly-published data on the U.S. department store shopper, along with global insights from How the World Shops.

WSL Strategic Retail’s How America Shops 2010 MegaTrends Study is based on a national online survey of 1,950 men and women. This is the 13th edition of the study.