1、While incumbents have upped their digital game,tech-first players are learning old-school retail.By Marc-Andr Kamel,Jolle de Montgolfier,Aaron Cheris,and Ruth LewisThe Future of Retail:The Age of ConvergenceCopyright 2022 Bain&Company,Inc.All rights reserved.1The Future of Retail:The Age of Converge

2、nceAt a Glance Traditional retailers and digital insurgents have become more evenly matched,and each is trying to learn from the other as they compete for an omnichannel advantage.Many retailers,including insurgents,will need more scale to fund the blending of physical and online channels,while dive

3、rsification will be vital as profit growth from traditional activities dries up.Tomorrows industry leaders will need to undergo a customer epiphany to extend their understanding of shoppers,while internally playing“talent Tetris”to overcome recruiting and retention challenges.Since the early days of

4、 the Internet,traditional retailers and digital insurgents have been battling for the same customers.Now,they are increasingly competing for the same talent,too.Big hitters lured from tech to a retail incumbent include Walmarts chief technology officer,a veteran of Google,Microsoft,and Amazon.Those

5、going in the opposite direction include a former Tesco mainstay now running Amazons physical stores and a senior executive at Australias Woolworths recruited to the Amazon Fresh grocery leadership team.The two-way flow of talent between some of the youngest and oldest names in the industry is a pote

6、nt sign of the convergence that will be one of the defining characteristics of retail over the next decade.On one side of the industry,that convergence is being powered by traditional retailers upping their digital game.Leaving behind their store-first roots,they are adding omnichannel capabilities