Digital Megatrends

Retail is changing fast, and supply chains need to adapt to the new reality. The internet gives consumers instant access to information about trends, pricing, and corporate practices. Digital retailers like Amazon raise customer expectations around speed of delivery and personalization. To meet these new demands, supply chains need to become faster, more flexible, more transparent, and more sustainable. New products need to be brought market almost as quickly as consumers can conceive of them. This requires flexibility at every link in the chain — the ability to pivot and reconfigure our processes radically and on demand. Transparency is part of this; the consumer and our teams internally need to know what’s happening at every step. We need to be open to feedback and adaptable. And this new transparency holds us to the highest ethical standards in terms of the sustainability of our sourcing and processes.

Supply chains have adapted to a digitized world driven by an exponential increase in computing power, but what are the other trends affecting these chains? Since the late 1970s, a growing middle class in Asia has changed the way supply chains have optimized to include a globalization of consumption as well as a globalization of production. Now that goods are being consumed in the East as well as produced there, supply chains must adapt. Learn about these demographic and economic shifts, the changing face of retail, the unprecedented advertising specificity due to new technology and data, and the advantage of sustainability.