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In January, Lee Peterson, executive vice president of thought leadership and marketing at WD Partners, told a National Retail Federation audience that “going shopping is dead.”
This was not about how consumers have become reticent about spending on discretionary items because of inflation or their high debt levels and low savings. Rather, it was about how so many retailers have failed to compete against the extreme level of convenience that has kept shoppers on their couches to make their purchases online.
For this episode, we sat down with Peterson, a retail veteran whose experience includes store management, apparel merchandising and store design. These days, he is pushing retailers to think about the very purpose of their brick-and-mortar stores and how to run them so that their customers get off that couch.
Resource links:
- Every store is a flagship
- Resale’s big secret? It may need stores
- Why more tech in stores shouldn’t mean fewer workers
- What it takes to build a private label
Editor’s note: This episode was produced and edited by Caroline Jansen.