By Harshvardhan Kabra | Global Practice Head, BORN Group

It wasn’t that long ago that we got our mobile phone services from wireless providers (Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), and we got our cable television from cable companies. But now the landscape is a lot more muddled as the traditional boundaries are being erased: Wireless companies are leveraging their broadband networks by adding video and data services to their voice offerings, while cable companies are adding voice and data to their video offerings.

Consumers generally benefit in situations where competition increases, but competition means providers have to step up as they fight it out in the real world. Telecom companies that want to win this battle must increase their effort along every vector of the customer journey with two objectives in mind: attract new customers and deepen their relationship with existing ones.

We refer to this challenge as ARENA:  Acquire & Retain, Nurture & Amplify. We believe that a strategy driven by personalization – real-time, individualized, and contextualized customer experiences – can lead to much greater differentiation and all the benefits it generates: greater retention and deeper customer relationships.

These 1:1 on-point personalized experiences cut across all customer touchpoints and services, from acquisition marketing to onboarding and activation to ongoing customer support and lifecycle marketing. Doing this well requires recognizing the contextual intricacies of each interaction and understanding customer needs, desires, and situations to be able to deliver the right message at the right time on the right channel.

If you can do this at scale, the rewards are immense. You will provide excellent customer experiences – satisfying in form and content, keeping customers happy, and positioning you well for building deeper, more profitable relationships.

The Foundation for 1:1 On-point Personalization

Most telecoms companies understand that personalization is a powerful strategic tool, but surprisingly few do personalization at scale well. At a foundational level, the first step is to change your focus. Think less about quick tactical wins; think more (much more) about a long-term strategic plan where on-point personalization is the centerpiece.

What does this mean in real-world terms? Identify use cases before you acquire and build a highly sophisticated MarTech stack. Here at the BORN Group, we use a four-tier approach to deliver 1:1 on-point personalization at scale to significant effect in many industries, including telecoms:

Step 1: Create a Personalization Center of Excellence

For large-scale enterprises like telecoms, personalization is important enough that it deserves its own center of excellence (CoE) covering the entire enterprise with a mission to define and articulate your personalization-at-scale strategy, including prioritized use cases and to develop an enterprise-wide solution for implementation.

A personalization CoE focuses on enterprise-wide elements like reusability, a holistic approach, and scalability – ensuring optimized and efficient tools – and ensures that more tactical personalization efforts are on-brand, effective, and privacy-compliant. Telecoms companies deal with a lot of personally identifiable information (PII), and are already careful and vigilant about how customer data is captured, stored, processed, and leveraged to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other mandates. Navigating the need for privacy and using personalization to compete effectively can be challenging – but it’s easier when you have a personalization CoE that has already thought through this balancing act.

Step 2: Identify and articulate data-driven challenges

Next, look at all your data to understand friction points, business problems, and existing challenges. You’ll want to analyze your data from real-time customer interactions, CRM and POS systems, and your contact center (including demographic and geo-specific data), plus second and third-party data from benchmarking your competitors and market research.

Here are some examples of how data can inform strategy and tactics:

• Looking at your web analytics, you realize you’re experiencing a high bounce rate. This suggests you’re successfully attracting customers but not effectively converting them into customers. Build a hypothesis around the possible causes of the bounce rate, then use personalization use cases to validate your findings and overcome them.

• You’re suffering from churn. The “Propensity to Churn” model, which most telecom companies already track, estimates the likelihood of losing individual consumers. The next step is to dive deep into this data and turn insights into personalized actions to help you retain “at-risk” customers.

• Another helpful data point is the average revenue per user (ARPU). If it’s flat or declining, you can create tailored plans and offers to build loyalty and deliver a better customer experience through personal interactions across relevant touchpoints and channels. A better CX generally has a higher ARPU and can significantly improve the lifetime value of each customer.

Step 3: Define & Prioritize

By now you’ve identified challenges and friction points that your company is facing. There’s a strong temptation to try to solve everything at once, but a better approach is to convert your challenges into well-defined use cases and prioritize them, like short-, medium-, and long-term goals and objectives.

In a recent engagement with a top-tier mobile service provider, we conducted a series of workshops with different groups within the organization as part of Define and Prioritize process. While there was some overlap, each of them had different challenges and different priorities. But by looking at the business holistically, we were able to help them create a comprehensive personalization roadmap that reflected overall business goals and addressed many of the more granular needs. Together, we developed three high-level use cases that aligned to run, crawl, and walk phases for implementation of a short-, medium-, and long-term view of the roadmap. 

Step 4: Build Capabilities

By the time you’ve reached this fourth step, you’re really in a great position to design your marketing stack from a vantage point of strategic insights and prioritized goals. So what do you need in terms of people, processes, and technology to enable your business to begin delivering personalization at scale?

Take the example mentioned above of a telecom company whose ARPU was flat. The provider articulated the strategic goal this way:

“To increase ARPU, we will deliver personalized offers to our customer using an omnichannel strategy focused on cross-selling and upselling.”

To deliver on this strategic goal requires a mix of people, process, and technology:

• People – the individuals and teams with the skills to deliver: In this case, that meant expertise with the customer data platform, probability modeling, email marketing, web personalization, and offer management.
• Process – the flows that turn strategy and expertise into execution: Using personalization to increase ARPU, for example, required creating an entire content supply chain to engage customers with helpful content and generate demand for ancillary products and services.
• Technology – the actual martech stack to enable the process: Sticking with our ARPU example, the tech stack involved a customer data platform with a decisioning engine that could identify the next “best offer” for a unique end-user in real-time. Note that personalization technologies must be scalable.

The Building Blocks for Delivering Successful Personalization

Regardless of where your company finds itself on your personalization journey, a foundational framework can make a huge difference in execution. At the BORN Group, we use a framework called STRIDE, a closed loop approach with four key components:

• Systematic Tracking: You must think of your entire customer journey, and diligently track data and interactions from all touchpoints and channels during the journey from prospect to customer to customer for life – while being diligent about privacy and compliance!
• Resolution of Identity: Remember the big goal: personalization. The key component of that word is person – the individual you’re trying to reach, the person who wants useful content and a great experience as a prospect and as a customer. To deliver on this necessity requires that you understand the identity of that person using a unified customer profile and obtaining a 360° view of that customer. Resolution of identity often uses probabilistic and deterministic matching as well as lookalike models.
• Informed Decision Science: When you have assembled the data and identified the customer profile, you create actionable insights. Then use informed decision science to design the best combination of content, offer, and channel.
• Effective Activation: Now you’re ready to activate your insights and execute your personalization strategy. Obviously, what you learn from effective activation flows back into the STRIDE framework – an ongoing closed-loop optimization effort.

Given the enormous progress of generative AI in the last year, you’ll want to consider AI in your personalization efforts – it can add value throughout the process. Marketers are already using generative AI to create new personalized content – text, images, and video – at scale, significantly improving time-to-market. But quality and uniqueness depend on user guidance, and there’s a real need for the ability to vet content for copyright issues, privacy concerns, and compliance with branding guidelines before content is deployed.

Generative AI is also playing an important role in gleaning insights from data and helping with decision-making. A good example is sentiment analysis, turning disparate data points into a valid perspective on customer satisfaction. AI and machine learning can also play key roles in determining the “next best experience” (NBX) at scale.

For telecom companies, and companies in many other sectors, the decision to use personalization is a matter of when – not if. The possibility of using data, analytics, and technology to deliver extremely granular and highly customized experiences to your clients and prospects may be the key source of competitive advantage in today’s marketing.

To learn more about how the BORN Group approaches personalization, contact us.

“Going green” is not a new trend. In today’s market, sustainability is table stakes.

Consumers can choose from a myriad of sustainable, competitively priced, quality products – which often viewed as more desirable. In this post-pandemic world, a growing consumer base, especially Gen Z, expect businesses to participate in the world even more actively and responsibly. In a recent Nielsen study, three-quarters of Gen Z consumers stated that sustainability is more important to them than brand names and 75% of Millennials are eco-conscious to the point of changing their buying habits to favor environmentally-friendly products.

For businesses, this means adopting policies and practices that benefit not only the environment, but society as well.

Brands can stand out from the sea of “green” by becoming leaders in social impact, whether that is sustainability, equity, or fair employment practices. But for their accountability practices to resonate with consumers, brands need to talk the talk and walk the walk. They must take meaningful action to back up their messaging, or else the perception of “greenwashing” or “virtue-signaling” can drive significant backlash from consumers. At the same time, companies who are making great strides in their purpose-driven work won’t benefit from consumer engagement if they don’t tell their story.

Help the world, and your bottom line

There are financial incentives to adopting sustainable and socially responsible practices. Studies show that sustainable practices:

• lower the cost of capital,
• result in better operational performance, and
• drive positive stock price performance

Purpose-driven practices can also drive innovation. Redesigning products or services to meet environmental standards or social needs creates new business opportunities. In addition, greater corporate responsibility improves morale and loyalty among employees. According to a study cited in Harvard Business Review, average turnover rates at purpose-driven businesses may be reduced by 25%-50%.

A major positive outcome of adopting sustainable and socially responsible practices is the competitive edge that comes with it. Studies show that, when cost and quality are equal, consumers prefer companies with clear purpose and ethical values. According to a global survey by Accenture Strategy, 62% of consumers are more attracted to brands with high ethical values and who are authentic in their purpose-driven work. This attraction translates into sales. A study conducted by Porter Novelli revealed that, holding cost and quality equal, 71% of consumers would rather purchase from a purpose-drive company.

Engage with responsibility

Consumer preference for brands with sustainable and ethical practices may be driven by an increased sense of responsibility. Studies show that nearly two-thirds of consumers across six international markets believe they “have a responsibility to purchase products that are good for the environment and society.”

But consumers feel that businesses have some responsibility, too. A 2020 ICF study found that 85% of consumers “want businesses to leverage their influence to raise awareness of sustainability issues.”A similar study from Accenture Strategy found this desire to be more generalized. 62% of consumers want businesses to “take a stand” on current issues, ranging from sustainability to transparency and fair employment practices. 

Consumers’ interest in businesses taking a stand is showing up in their actions, from commentary on social media to participating in boycotts. Younger generations are increasingly more invested, more likely to praise socially responsible and sustainable brands, and critique brands that are not. As time goes on, these interactions will accelerate.

Tell your story

Social activism is a key part of building an effective brand story. Brand storytelling is the thread that ties every touchpoint in the consumer experience together. Through storytelling, brand values become more deeply embedded in consumer minds, attitudes, and ultimately, their decisions. In other words, purpose-driven brand stories are attractive and engaging.

For example, TATA Consumer, one of India’s leading food & beverage companies, tells their story through a lens of environmental and social activism. Their mission is clear: “At TATA Consumer, we stand For Better products, nutrition, communities, and planet.” TATA approached BORN to strengthen their online presence across multiple markets. BORN worked with TATA to refresh their brand identity. To do this, they amplified brand storytelling throughout the newly developed site, re-aligning it with TATA’s “For Better” philosophy. TATA’s successes – from ranking as the number one food brand in India’s Brand Equity Survey, to becoming the first industrial township to meet international environmental standards – are highlighted on the homepage and in a primary section of the site. Their brand story integrates not only the importance of their mission, but the tangible impact TATA has on the world.

Be honest

Brand storytelling is more than the brand’s voice, heritage, and narrative. It must be a transparent conversation about your brand’s efforts to put their values into practice. Above all, consumers want companies to be honest. Studies show that corporate transparency may be even more important than corporate actions. Two-thirds of consumers think transparency is one of a brand’s most attractive qualities and strongly influences where they buy.

An authentic story helps consumers understand where your company has come from and where you’re going. This means being open about successes as well as failures. Consumers understand that implementing sustainable and socially responsible practices is difficult, complex, and an ongoing journey.  An honest conversation about that journey, with its ups and downs, is not only relatable, but also fosters a more authentic relationship with consumers.

Acknowledging the ways in which a company isn’t perfect builds trust. Studies show that, when a company leads with purpose, consumers are 72% more likely to forgive that company if it makes a misstep.

A strong, purpose-driven brand story can be found threaded throughout the digital presence of Reformation, an American clothing retailer. This retailer has a strong following of loyal consumers who believe in their mission statement: “We have big goals, like reducing more emissions than we make, making all our stuff from recyclable materials and trying to save the Earth while looking damn good doing it.” Reformation proves that the latest trends in fashion can go hand-in-hand with sustainability and green initiatives. They design stylish, vintage-inspired women’s clothes using only recycled, regenerative, or renewable materials in their clothes. Reformation also carefully tracks consumer data and feedback to produce only what they know they can sell in order to prevent “textile” waste. During their manufacturing they also take into account their energy consumption, water waste, greenhouse emissions and human and eco toxicity.

We’re all in this together

Sustainability and social responsibility cannot be accomplished in a vacuum. Built on honesty and trust, the relationship between brands and their consumers can help drive greater impact. Consumers are an important part of a brand’s ecosystem.

As consumers push brands to be more responsible and transparent, brands can work with their consumers to better understand how they can do so. Brands should be asking questions like:

• What do our consumers care about?
• What resonates with our consumers?
• How can our brand work with consumers to innovate, educate, and make an impact?

Collaboration between stakeholders, employees and consumers can help companies discover shared values across the ecosystem and identify where the company can make a difference.

Combining research, service design, and brand storytelling, XDS design agencies BORN and  Mad*Pow work together to help organizations have meaningful conversations with their audiences, drive change within their organizations, and share their stories with the world.

Being sustainable, socially responsible, and authentic is an ongoing journey. Changing the world is hard. We’re here to support the work at every step of the way.

Shopping is a highly emotional experience. Studies reveal that emotional impulses drive up to 95% of purchasing decisions.¹ The products and services we buy influence how we feel. As society emerges from the pandemic and online shopping continues to flourish, consumers desire a personalized shopping experience where they feel understood. In response, retailers must develop emotional intelligence to attract and retain customers. 

Emotional Intelligence Drives Sales

Emotional intelligence refers to evaluating, understanding, and controlling emotions. There is an immense payoff when companies connect with customers’ emotions. Customers who like the companies they do business with are more likely to continue to buy. Additionally, 78% of loyal customers recommend favorite brands and products to friends and family.² Therefore, retailers must develop emotional intelligence to create a retail experience that is in tune with the feelings of their customers. Harnessing the power of emotional intelligence gives retailers the ability to target customers at the right time, through the appropriate channel, and approach them in a way that resonates on a deeper level. 

Customer Experience is the New Battlefield

In today’s highly competitive market, conventional business wisdom is not enough to succeed. With countless online retail sites, it is increasingly difficult for brands to differentiate themselves. Creating an emotionally intelligent brand with an optimized website makes customers feel like part of the experience, not just part of a transaction. 

For customers, it is critical to feel prioritized by the brands they consume. Research shows that 86% of buyers will pay more for a great customer experience.³ This sentiment has increased the need for brands to take their marketing and websites to a new level by incorporating empathy and emotional intelligence into digital experiences and customer communications. 

Emotional Motivators

As eCommerce companies craft their websites, they must remember that customer purchases are inherently driven by emotional responses. A study by the Harvard Business Review studied customers’ interactions with hundreds of brands across all categories. It concluded that more than three hundred “emotional motivators” influence consumer behavior.⁴ Learning which emotional motivators lead to sales help brands strategically target the feelings that motivate customers to make purchases. These motivators provide retailers with valuable insights that can be applied when designing and improving a company’s products, services, and retail site. 

Broaden Customer Reach through Digital Channels

Brands must be accessible to their customers on the internet and through their smart devices in this digital age. Tech companies like Amazon, which offer a hassle-free experience and expedited shipping, have encouraged some consumers to skip in-person shopping altogether. To compete with the convenience of retail giants like Amazon, Retailers must focus their attention on developing emotionally intelligent websites to win over shoppers and drive sales. Data shows that 86% of customers with high emotional engagement want access to a brand through numerous channels.⁵ Brands must become both emotionally and digitally intelligent so customers return for the experience as well as the product. 

Multiple Payment Options Increase Sales

For a business to succeed, it is critical to offer easy and convenient ways for customers to pay. Providing customers with multiple payment options encourages sales. While credit cards are still the dominant online payment form, accepting alternative payment methods such as PayPal, debit cards, and cryptocurrencies maximizes sales. According to a study by PPRO 42% of consumers in the U.S. say they would not follow through with a purchase if their preferred payment method is not available.⁶ Retailers can also offer deferred payment through Buy now, pay later platforms that make purchases more achievable for some customers. Providing as many choices as possible allows customers to choose the way that works best for their needs at the time. 

Building Trust

There is a significant connection between trust and closing a sale. To build trust, retailers should include extensive contact information on their website, provide chatbots, FAQs, and call center phone numbers to answer customer questions, and display customer reviews prominently. Online consumers rely on reviews when making purchasing decisions. Studies show that 93% of customers read reviews before buying a product.⁷ Additionally, retailers should promise shoppers a safe and secure checkout that protects them from fraud. 

Incentive Programs

Customer loyalty is essential to growing a business. Repeat customers are extremely valuable to brands. Research shows that 70% of emotionally connected customers spend twice the amount when they are loyal to a brand.⁶ Retailers operating in markets with multiple competitors can set themselves apart from the competition by developing loyalty programs. Creating a customer loyalty program helps incentivize customers to become repeat customers by providing rewards for making repeated purchases. Discounts, rebates, rewards, free merchandise, and coupons motivate customers to spend more with brands and reinforce the consumer/brand connection. Focusing on loyalty programs helps brands align themselves with the segment of their customer base spending the most and deepens the relationship. 

Consumers are looking for digital retail stores to go the extra mile and cater to their needs. Approaching the customer experience with emotional intelligence is necessary to drive sales and win repeat customers. Personalizing sales techniques to fit customer needs, being transparent and helpful, and creating incentives to encourage customers to be part of a digital community will drive sales and lead to future purchases. Building websites that connect with the emotions of their customers will lead to a significant return on investment. 

Footnotes:

1)https://www.idslogic.com/blog/2017/11/using-emotional-intelligence-to-power-your-ecommerce-website.html

2)https://www.semrush.com/blog/word-of-mouth-stats/

3) https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2020/06/23/4-actionable-customer-experience-statistics-for-2020/?sh=25c72d391a84

4)https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions

5) https://cxindex.com/company/blog/emotional-intelligence-the-key-ingredient-to-great-customer-experience/

6) https://www.volusion.com/blog/why-accepting-multiple-payment-methods-is-vital-for-ecommerce-success/

7) https://www.shopify.com/blog/15359677-why-online-store-owners-should-embrace-online-reviews

We conclude our three part exploration into our future relationship with retail and how do we navigate this “new Normal”.  

Stores And Malls Will Need To Rethink Existing Spaces 

Before the pandemic the US had the most retail square footage per capita in the world, but now with more people shopping online, retailers don’t need such an abundance of store space. Walmart have created automated fulfilment centers in some of their larger outlets, while in the UK both John Lewis and Marks and Spencer announced plans to downsize their flagship Oxford Street stores and convert entire floors into office space. It’s likely that other large retailers will follow suit, either entering partnerships to share space with other brands or local businesses, selling off space, or finding other uses for it, concentrating on tech-enabled service and online ordering, rather than having huge amounts of stock on site. 

As stores like Macy’s and Sephora steer away from new mall openings and test stand-alone stores instead it seems like malls will also have to find new purpose.¹ Their future again is likely to be mixed use, with office space, gyms, warehouse space, entertainment venues and more. Who knows, in the future maybe that ugly out-of-town mall will devote some of its space to becoming a market garden. 

Local Produce, Digital Fashion and Re-use Goes Mainstream

It’s not just local neighbourhoods that will see an increased focus but local products too, driven by ethical and environmental considerations but also perhaps by practicality. After years of globalization, the world has been experiencing a supply chain crisis caused by an endless list of problems: Covid, trade tensions between the US and China, the Suez Canal blockage, rising shipping costs, a shortage of truck drivers, and in the UK’s case, Brexit. 

Some may scoff but digital fashion is another growing area, giving brands an opportunity to interact with customers at home who can show off their items online. Balenciaga have created digital fashion for Fortnite.² Farfetch are gifting influencers in digital garments from pre-order collections, saving on shipping costs and gauging interest before investing in stock.³ 

The impact of consumption on the environment is increasingly on consumers’ minds, and It’s likely that resale options will move further into the spotlight. IKEA are already offering a buy-back service, finding new owners for resale goods in their ‘bargain corner’, while the original owner gets an agreed value loaded to a card they can spend in the store.⁴ FarFetch and Zelando have also added pre-owned sections to their online businesses. 

Conclusion: New Opportunities For Retail In A Time Of Change

All the above paints a complex picture. Change is happening in every aspect of the retail landscape. Consumers and retailers will need to get adjust to the ‘new normal’: where online shopping is an efficient way of meeting needs, but physical shopping is a treat, where we shop locally but the big platforms become bigger, where retailers need to build their operations on agile technology platforms that connect every aspect of their business from inventory to marketing. 

It’s been a strange and worrying time, but now more than ever there is a chance to make changes that not only keep online and physical retailers afloat, and consumers supplied but that create a low-carbon future that protects the planet. Yesterday and today has brought much turmoil, but there’s no reason we can’t be optimistic about tomorrow.

1. Labour To Scrap Business Rates and Replace With A Fairer System, Labour, https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-to-scrap-business-rates-and-replace-with-fairer-system/

2. High Digital Fashion Drops Into Fortnite With Balenciaga, Epic Games, https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/high-digital-fashion-drops-into-fortnite-with-balenciaga

3. Vogue Business, Influencers Are Wearing Digital Versions of Physical Clothes Now, https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/influencers-are-wearing-digital-versions-of-physical-clothes-now

4. A Circular Economy Starts With A BILLY Bookcase…Or INGO Table, Or NORRARYD Chair, Ikea, https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/this-is-ikea/sustainable-everyday/buy-back-and-resell-service-pubcc071810

Airports are undergoing an evolution to improve the customer experience and generate profits. Realizing their potential to be more than just travel hubs, airports are exploring innovative ways to make guests feel safer, provide unique shopping experiences and make time in the terminal more meaningful. Imagine a space similar to a lounge or upscale shopping mall where travelers can relax, eat, drink and shop as they wait for their flights. Airports can provide a personal and stress-free experience through physical and virtual interaction based on passenger data. Deeper engagement made possible through digitalization and modernized infrastructure would allow airports to improve relationships with travelers.

Improving Airport Infrastructure 

The airport experience should be an enjoyable part of the journey rather than a processing station getting passengers to their destinations. Though many airports around the country are dated and offer limited shopping and dining options, there is a renewed focus on updating existing infrastructure as travelers return to airports following the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 the U.S. Department of Transportation released US$76 million in grants to upgrade airport infrastructure. Although the offerings apply to only three U.S. airports right now, these are just the first of a series of more than 1,500 grants that will infuse US$3.2 billion into hundreds of airports around the country.¹ Even without the grants, many cities are reimaging existing facilities to support an ever-growing number of travelers.

Focus On Health And Safety

In addition to improving airport facilities, lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic play a significant role in enhancing customer experience. Features such as automated passenger processing and touchless services have become increasingly popular. Passengers also desire a sense of space instead of overcrowded lines and limited seating. Airports, including Changi, are implementing bright colors, natural lighting, and large open spaces.³ With a focus on health, contactless TSA checkpoint entry and more open spaces have already begun changing the passenger experience.

Improving The Customer Journey With Data 

Airports can provide a more enjoyable customer experience by better understanding the movement of passengers through their airport journey. Data from WiFi, cameras, people counters and other data sources provides real-time information about movement, occupancy and standing time in various airport areas.² These insights can help airports optimize staff schedules, reduce waiting times, reduce stress and encourage spending in retail locations. Additionally, data collected from guest WiFi networks enables targeted marketing from nearby retailers to be sent directly to passengers for an increased chance of making a sale.

Business Opportunities In Travel Retail

Modern airports recognize the critical economic role of travel retail for growth and development. They have the advantage of a captive audience looking for ways to pass the time. Airports offer brands an opportunity to maximize visibility and customer engagement. While most retail has shifted transactions and fulfillment online, physical airport storefronts can provide strong customer interaction.³ These retail spaces can display products and engage with customers in meaningful ways to aid in conversion and retention. By creating personalized and unique experiences, brands can expect further engagement and sales after customers leave the airport. 

Aligning Luxury With Everyday Products

Airports are undergoing renovations by designing footpaths and atriums to maximize exposure to retailers. Mass-market and luxury retailers are now joining popular duty-free stores, newsstands and gift shops. High-end luxury retailers see airport storefronts as a way to market their products to international audiences and generate more sales. According to Allied Market research, airport retail sales are expected to top US$40 billion by 2027, with perfume and cosmetics leading the way, then wine and spirits following.⁴ Luxury retailers have a massive potential for profit by opening shops within airports and targeting travelers who are shopping to pass the time.

Technology And Automation

Nowadays, most brands generate sales through digital marketplaces, and it’s the same for airport retail. However, airport storefronts benefit most from digital marketplaces that enable remote ordering and automated check-out. Currently, retail giant Hudson Group is testing Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in select locations. These Hudson locations allow customers to tap a credit card on entry, pick out items, and exit, all while avoiding check-out lines.⁵ Automating the process allows for easy transactions and reduced labor costs. However, retailers must have a robust digital marketplace to handle all transactions. During the 2020 Black Friday holiday, customers spent US$160 million shopping on digital marketplaces powered by Mirakl, which maintained 100% uptime, showing the importance of having strong technology as demand increases.⁷ It’s also about using a combination of technology that gives retailers an edge. Other providers, including FetchyFox, offer intuitive digital marketplaces that enable speedy contactless shopping and features artificial intelligence (A.I.) for data collection.⁶ Using a digital marketplace with automation and data capabilities will help airport retailers keep up with demand and modernize their business strategy.

The Future Is Now

Airports worldwide are starting to elevate the travel experience. As COVID-19 fears are dissipating, passengers are eager to travel, and airports are busier than ever. Government funding is being used for improving infrastructure and health safety. Passengers want fewer crowds and more open spaces to relax while waiting for departures. They also want to shop, and the time-honored tradition of duty-free isn’t going away. In fact, airport retail is growing faster than ever and now includes high-end luxury brands. However, the traditional storefront is changing, and customers can now shop from digital marketplaces that offer more options, automation and no lines. This is the time for airports and consumer brands to join forces to create an unbelievable experience for everyone.

Footnotes

1)https://www.travelagewest.com/Industry-Insight/Business-Features/New-Airport-Upgrades-Will-Change-the-Air-Travel-Experience

2)https://skyfii.io/blog/how-data-can-help-convert-an-airport-passenger-into-a-retail-customer/

3)https://www.moodiedavittreport.com/sense-of-space-reimagining-the-airport-retail-experience-for-the-new-world/

4)https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/a-luxury-retail-revival-at-airports-around-the-world-01628279303

5)https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210608005195/en/Hudson-Nonstop-Arriveshttps://skyfii.io/blog/how-data-can-help-convert-an-airport-passenger-into-a-retail-customer/-In-Chicago-Using-Amazon’s-Just-Walk-Out-Technology

6) https://www.fetchyfox.com/

7)https://blog.mirakl.com/mirakl-achieves-record-gmv-growth-extends-sizable-lead-in-the-enterprise-marketplace-category-in-2020

We continue our exploration of the current and future shape of retail around the globe as brands commence the lengthy road of recovery for some and normality for most.

What will the new retail landscape look like? Now that the wide scale lockdowns are mostly over, supply chain issues and staffing woes still abound, hampering a return to retail as we knew it. How will brands adapt to these new consumer behaviors and are they here to stay? Read on.

Physical Stores Still Have Their Place

Despite the normalization of online shopping and home delivery during lockdown, many consumers were counting the days before they could walk through the doors of physical stores again. Tomorrow’s retailers still need to win hearts and minds in the real world and shouldn’t give up all their store space just yet. 

One of the reasons for this might be just how much people love browsing. Shopping online tends to be goal-based and transactional, but people browse in-person not only because they need something, but because they enjoy it. A study by Michael Guiry,¹ Associate Professor of Marketing at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, suggests that for some of us shopping forms part of our self-concept, cementing, and playing back, our ideas of who we are. Although customers appreciate the best efforts of online retailers in creating browsing journeys, they are still only a facsimile, lacking in the excitement and sensory details that are so much part of the experience in real life. 

For all the news headlines on the rise and rise of online shopping, most retail is still taking place in physical spaces. In the US, by February 2021 it had settled at around 15% of sales.² And although many retailers have closed branches and reduced shoppable space they’re unlikely to get rid of it completely. The digital and physical stores of the future will have a symbiotic relationship, with digital driving footfall to physical stores that support online sales.

A Future Of Experiential Retail

Real-life shopping at its best isn’t just about making a transaction, it’s about entertainment, about entering a different space and socializing with friends, family, and community. Physical retailers can offer many of the things we’ve all missed during the pandemic: the excitement of new discoveries, human connections, personal service, sensory moments. These experiential retail experiences, powered by new technologies, will be center stage in the next couple of years as retailers try to tempt consumers back, and with footfall likely to be reduced, they will be looking to squeeze every drop of value out of the customers who come through the door. 

For example, Nike, always ahead in experiential experiences, have launched Nike Rise in Guangzhou, China and in Seoul, South Korea: technology-driven retail hubs that work with the Nike App to create experiences powered by customer data.³ Dick’s Sporting Goods in the US opened its biggest-ever store in the spring of 2021 in a bid to drive deeper engagement with customers. The ‘House of Sport’ site in Victor, New York includes an indoor rock-climbing wall, golf driving bays and a putting green, as well as a health and wellness shop and a track and turf field.⁴ 

In London, with the pandemic still on everyone’s minds, Lush’s redesign of its Oxford Street store includes tech innovations imported from its Shinjuku store, with QR codes and video displays creating an interactive experience that doesn’t have to be hands-on – no mean feat for a cosmetics retailer.⁵ Meanwhile, shopping mall Westfield London is launching Situ Live, a ‘discovery playhouse’ where customers can try out new products.⁶

In the post-Covid world, retailers will be looking to use technology to examine footfall, drive sales and create new customer experiences. LiDAR technology uses infrared light to sense movement, meaning that retailers can measure footfall and dwell time as well as analyzing the success of visual merchandising and customer engagement, tracking individuals with no loss of privacy as only an outline is ever recorded. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology can help anyone with a smartphone navigate around a mall, but it can also be utilized by furniture retailers. IKEA’s newly revamped IKEA Studio app not only enables the user to see a chosen piece of furniture in situ in their home, it allows them to redesign the entire room.⁷ In-store QR codes can provide product information, special deals or an easy way to buy online in a bid to lessen the practice of ‘showrooming’, i.e. looking at goods in physical stores before buying them at a lower price from an online competitor. 

Local Shopping For Local People

Repeated lockdowns and the shift towards home working has meant a new focus on shopping locally. In the UK the number of independent stores grew in the first half of 2021 for the first time since 2017,⁸ able to take advantage of government support measures, such as business rates relief and furlough schemes, as well as deals on rent offered by landlords keen to fill spaces vacated by failing chain stores.

There’s an opportunity for local main streets to evolve to serve new needs: a return to the times before out-of-town malls and retail parks. Even before the pandemic, city planners across the world including Paris, Barcelona, Portland, and Melbourne were responding to climate change by encouraging ‘15-minute cities’, creating blocks where people can access all their everyday services within a short walk or bike ride, reducing traffic and pollution and creating more space for trees.⁹

Larger chain retailers are already responding to new patterns of hybrid working. In the UK Sainsbury’s has recently announced a new partnership with Itsu, Leon and Wasabi, trialling ‘lunch stands’ across 300 stores, aimed at consumers working from home or in the office. Sainsbury’s Food for Later category planner Frances Hughes said: “As a hybrid style of working becomes more normal, we’ve been working hard to analyze customer needs when it comes to their lunchtime meals…the introduction of the in-aisle lunch stand makes it easily accessible for anyone to pick up an affordable and balanced meal, no matter what your daily ritual is.”¹⁰

Downtown Areas Need New Purpose

Downtown areas that were once busy with office workers are significantly quieter since the pandemic. In the future they will need to find new reasons to attract visitors and fill space, with shops, grocery stores and restaurants alongside medical centers, community, leisure, housing and workspace. 

There needs to be a greater emphasis on flexibility and sharing, finding purpose for underused spaces, and providing the amenities that communities need, supporting small businesses, creatives and social enterprises who might otherwise find it impossible to have a physical presence. And it’s the perfect time for experimentation, finding out what works as we move into our post-pandemic future. In some ways the lasting effects of Covid could give a new lease of life to physical retail locations that had been declining over the years. 

But it’s not just down to stores and other businesses to create the successful downtown shopping areas and main streets of the future. Governments and landlords will need to work with them to create areas suited to local communities and their changing needs. They also need to relook at rates and rent models that have decimated businesses unable to operate during lockdown. The alternative is yet more businesses going under, boarded-up shops and the hollowing out of retail areas. Some landlords have already offered their retail tenants turnover-based rents in a bid to save main streets. In the UK, the government are under pressure from within their own party to reform business rates, and the opposition Labour party has already announced their wish to scrap them in favor of a new system that increases the digital services tax on tech giants.¹¹

Footnotes

1. Defining And Measuring Recreational Shopper Identity, SpringerLink, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1177/0092070305282042

2. State Of Retail, National Retail Federation, https://nrf.com/topics/economy/state-retail

3. Nike’s Latest Retail Concept Powered By The Pulse Of Sport, Nike News, https://news.nike.com/news/nike-rise-retail-concept

4. Dick’s Sporting Goods Just Opened A Massive Store With A Virtual Driving Range And Outdoor Track. Here’s A Look Inside, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/09/dicks-sporting-goods-new-store-has-a-driving-range-and-outdoor-track.html

5. In Pictures: Lush Oxford Street Reopens With Innovative Global Concepts, The Industry.Fashion, https://www.theindustry.fashion/in-pictures-lush-oxford-street-re-opens-with-innovative-global-concepts/

6. “It’s Not A Store, It’s A Venue”: How Situ Live is Transforming The Way We Shop, Charged Retail Tech News, https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2021/05/19/its-not-a-store-its-a-venue-how-situ-live-is-transforming-the-way-we-shop/

7. IKEA’s Fancy New App Lets You Design Entire Rooms, Wired, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-studio-ar-app

8. Independent Retail Sector Returns To Growth, Drapers, https://www.drapersonline.com/news/independent-stores-benefit-from-chain-closures

9. The 15-Minute City – No Cars Required – Is Urban Planning’s New Utopia, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-12/paris-s-15-minute-city-could-be-coming-to-an-urban-area-near-you

10. Sainsbury’s Launches News In-Aisle Concept With Over 20 Lunch Meals, The Grocer, https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/sainsburys/sainsburys-launches-new-in-aisle-concept-with-over-20-lunch-meals/660142.article

11. As Macy’s and Sephora Flee the Mall, Will Other Retailers Follow?, The Motley Fool, https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/02/13/as-macys-and-sephora-flee-the-mall-will-other-reta.aspx

Nothing could have prepared retailers for Covid. Since the pandemic forced the first widespread lockdowns in living memory, some have collapsed, the pandemic hastening their demise after a lackluster few years. Others survived but are changing their business models and spaces, looking for new ways to maintain sales and profits. A third set are buoyant, having seen online sales rocket. All have been deeply affected by the events of the last couple of years and are no doubt wondering what the future will bring. 

Whether 2022 sees the last of the lockdowns or not, Covid has changed the way we live and shop for good. The pandemic has not only accelerated digital transformation, it has also necessitated a total rethink of the future of retail in all its aspects: online and in-store, local, downtown or mall, delivered to your door or click-and-collect. Retailers now need to carve out a successful future in this new normal, with agility baked into their operations so they are well placed to respond to changing situations. But what will the new retail landscape look like? Now that the widescale lockdowns are over, what new consumer behaviors are here to stay?

Competition Heats Up Among The Giants: Amazon And Walmart 

Apple, Facebook, (Google) Alphabet, Microsoft Amazon and Walmart all saw huge increases in sales and profits since the start of the pandemic. Amazon saw almost every aspect of their business rise, from web services to streaming to home delivery, accounting for 41% of all US online retail sales in 2021.¹ The company has opened Amazon Fresh grocery and convenience stores and is now moving into its own branded FMCG products with Aplenty. Expansion is inevitable, but the brand is keeping quiet about its plans. 

Meanwhile Walmart’s ecommerce sales grew 74%, leading them to hire more than 235,000 store associates². Having largely left the Marketplace part of the business dormant for some years, it spruced up its offering, undercut Amazon for commission on some items and reached 70,000 sellers, projected to increase 146% by the end of 2022.³ Amazon’s marketplace is still far bigger, expected to have more than 3 million sellers in the US by the end of 2022 and 7.5 million globally according to Marketplace Pulse. But Walmart has physical stores, which means successful online vendors could find opportunities to sell offline too. The company also apparently has plans beyond retail and is aiming to develop its services in advertising sales and healthcare, where it will be jostling for position once more with main rival Amazon. 

A Permanent Shift Towards Online Shopping 

Consumers have grown to rely on online shopping, not only for essentials like groceries and toiletries, but also for goods and services to keep them entertained at home. During lockdown the winners were those businesses who, like Amazon and Walmart, were able to meet the surge in demand while maintaining a high level of customer service, as well as those who could quickly pivot their offering in response to changing customer needs. 

All the surveys and statistics agree that the shift towards online shopping is likely to be permanent. According to IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years.⁴ A Qubit survey polling 1,500 US and UK customers in July 2021 found that nearly 86% planned to continue shopping as they had over the last 12 months⁵, despite physical retailers re-opening, and the intent was clear in all age groups. McKinsey reports that ecommerce remains at around 35% above pre-Covid levels.⁶ But online shopping brings slimmer margins and moving forward retailers will need to find ways of increasing basket spend and keeping warehousing and delivery costs down, as well as creating experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

Creating experiences fit for the future

BORN has worked with several leading retailers to ensure their online customer experiences are optimized for this new environment. Brooks Brothers, America’s oldest retailer needed to become ‘far more than a store’. Now they have reimagined the online experience, removing friction and telling the brand story more effectively. It’s easier for users to discover new products, educate themselves on the options available and become part of the loyalty scheme to reap future benefits. 

Meanwhile, world-leading luxury watch brand Rado needed to create a better experience for mobile. The BORN team redesigned the mobile interface, enhancing the content and navigation to provide a better showcase for products and tackling content management and eCommerce functionality. These retailers are future proofing their online experiences, ensuring that they measure up to customers’ ever-growing expectations. 

Delivering For Customers, And The Environment

Efficient delivery comes at a cost, to customers, the retailer and to the environment. But it’s also key to the convenience of online shopping. What could it look like in the future?

Click-and-collect has solid advantages for retailers, driving footfall to physical stores where customers may make additional purchases as well as being a low-carbon option. Businesses finding themselves with an abundance of space are dedicating an increasing proportion to fulfilling click-and-collect orders. 

Speedy home deliveries are more of an issue. The problem with next-day deliveries is that it means half-empty vans are doing the same trips, sometimes multiple times a day. That ‘last mile’ comes at a high carbon cost. There’s a commonly held view that people will insist on speed, but a study for a major retailer in Mexico found that slower shipping was acceptable to 71% of customers if they were told it meant saving a certain number of trees, calculated to be equivalent to carbon emissions caused by faster shipping.⁷ The author of the study is hoping that giants like Amazon or Walmart might take note for the future; in the UK ASOS are already offering reduced shipping rates and a discount code for ‘no hurry’ delivery.⁸  Perhaps consumers who expect super-fast delivery, can be weaned off it in the interests of the environment, at least for the most part. 

Amazon are beginning to invest in electric vehicles for the ‘last mile’, with their robot delivery system Amazon Scout operating in four US states and the business further developing the technology in the UK.⁹ For an even more futuristic, if rather terrifying option, ANYbotics and Continental’s concept combining driverless shuttle vehicles with robot delivery dogs looks uncomfortably like something from dystopian TV series Black Mirror.¹⁰

Footnotes

1. Amazon Clobbers Competition, Accounting for Over 40% of US Retail Eccomerce Sales In 2021, eMarketer, https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-clobbers-competition-us-retail-ecommerce-sales-2021

2. How Walmart is Responding to Covid-Related Challenges, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2021/09/01/how-covid-repeatedly-put-walmart-to-the-test/?sh=4b190a6617bd

3. How The Pandemic Helped Walmart Battle Amazon Marketplace For Sellers, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/how-pandemic-helped-walmart-battle-amazon-marketplace-sellers-2021-04-14/

4. COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerated Shift To E-commerce By 5 Years, New Report Says, TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/24/covid-19-pandemic-accelerated-shift-to-e-commerce-by-5-years-new-report-says/

5. Consumers Plan To Keep Shopping Online, Despite Stores Reopening, Fashionunited, https://fashionunited.uk/news/retail/consumers-plan-to-keep-shopping-online-despite-stores-reopening/2021081257089

6. US Consumer Sentiment and Behaviors During The Coronavirus Crisis, McKinsey & Company, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-us-consumer-sentiment-during-the-coronavirus-crisis

7. How To Shop Online More Sustainably, NY Times Wirecutter, https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/shop-online-sustainably/

8. How Does Your ASOS No Hurry Delivery Service Work?, ASOS, https://www.asos.com/customer-care/delivery/how-does-your-asos-no-hurry-delivery-service-work/

9. Is Amazon’s Scout Delivery Robot Coming to the UK and Europe Soon?, Pocket-lint, https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/amazon/153671-is-amazon-s-scout-delivery-robot-coming-to-the-uk-and-europe-soon

10. This Robot Delivery Dog Can Bring Your Parcel Right To Your Doorstep, Mashable, https://mashable.com/video/driverless-vehicle-deploys-robot-delivery-dogs

Towards the end of October 2021 Facebook announced big news: the corporate business was changing its name to Meta, while Facebook the social media platform would remain. 

Mark Zuckerberg has solid reasons for the rebrand. The company needed a broader title, now that it also includes Instagram, Whatsapp and Oculus VR as well as mobile web analytics company Onavo, and Messenger precursor Beluga. Meta reflects a new focus on the metaverse and demonstrates the ambition to lead the way in this future digital realm. As an aside, it’s also worth noting that Facebook the social media site is more popular than ever, but it’s not attracting young people like it used to. A shrewd operator like Zuckerberg knows that it’s better to shift focus when a successful product is at its peak rather than on the decline.

All of this makes sense. First imagined in a 1990s sci-fi novel and conjured up in movies from Total Recall to Wreck-It Ralph, the future metaverse is an exhilarating concept, a place of boundless possibilities and experiences. Zuckerberg wants his company to be its guiding light. Yet many people are sceptical. Was this really the deciding factor for the name change, or was it to distance the business from negative press? 

Trust in Facebook was already low after testimony from whistle-blower Frances Haugen hit the press, telling of polarizing algorithms, understaffing in key areas concerned with safety and a culture that ignored known problems. The rebrand hasn’t helped its cause. A survey by SightX reported that 37.5% of respondents did not believe the name change would bring any real changes to the organization. Many believe it was because of poor public perception, rather than to better fit the company’s future goals and vision. Still, 2022 is a new year and as people start to see the metaverse taking shape they may be more accepting of the reasons behind the rebrand. 

The good, the bad, and the need for regulation

Like Coca-Cola, Facebook the platform is nigh-on universal; open to anyone with internet access. Most of us have been Facebook users at one time or another and have had largely positive experiences. We’ve enjoyed its window into the lives of friends, family and colleagues, the way it has re-connected us with those we had lost touch with and enabled groups of people from all over the world to create communities around niche interests. But there’s no ignoring the bad stuff.

That bad stuff has been coming from all angles. Privacy and a lack of transparency over user data is one issue; the company’s low tax contributions is another. Cloning competitor apps like TikTok (Instagram Reels), and Snapchat (Facebook Stories), has also attracted criticism. Content moderators brought a lawsuit after reporting poor working conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder; some have now been compensated for their experiences. 

But the biggest concerns are to do with the disconnect between Facebook’s mission statement of bringing the world closer together, and the real-world damage caused to individuals, minority groups and sometimes entire nations because the business hasn’t done enough to take down and prevent the spread of fake news and harmful content.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that changes to Facebook’s content algorithm stoked division and did not do enough to reduce Covid 19 vaccine hesitancy. In addition, Instagram was harming the mental health of teenage girls. UK natural beauty company Lush recently took the radical step of quitting Facebook and Instagram alongside Snapchat and TikTok, citing the negative impact the social media sites have on young people’s mental health.

Comments made by ex-members of Facebook staff together with the company’s own leaked research and that of many other organizations also suggest that not enough is being done to deal with misinformation and malign content. Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya didn’t pull any punches about the seriousness of the issue, saying ‘We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works’. 

Meta/Facebook stress that they make robust efforts to deal with negative content. The company has just announced the development of a new AI which is quick to ‘learn’ to spot harmful content, rather than taking months of training. 

However, the company has been criticised for placing too much emphasis on reacting to problems and not enough on preventing them. So far, AI does not seem to have been able to spot harmful content before the damage is done. Is it possible to do enough? And how can they be confident about policing behaviour in the future metaverse, with its billions of tiny interactions in every moment? We just don’t know the answers yet. 

Meta’s Horizon Worlds platform may provide a clue as to how moderation of the metaverse might work. Users in this colorful virtual space can report harmful behavior and send recorded data from their device as evidence. They can also activate a ‘safe zone’, a personal space where they can take time out and mute, block, or report users if necessary. Users can be suspended or permanently excluded if they are found to be breaking the rules. Community Guides with their own avatars inhabit the space and keep an eye on things. It’s a mostly reactive rather than preventative approach, but then it’s hard to see how prevention could work. Though some warning signs can be noted, we can’t – yet – predict crime in the way shown in Minority Report.

People might just have to accept that a future virtual world, like social media, reflects society and so will never be perfect. Techdirt editor Mike Masnick put it like this: content moderation is impossible to do well at scale, because in a situation where there are billions of interactions, even if 99.9% of content decisions are ‘right’, the 1% of ‘wrong’ decisions could still represent thousands of negative experience. It will be up to individuals to decide how much time they want to spend in the metaverse and, to a degree, how to keep themselves safe.  

But more regulation will be needed. Businesses exist to make money; it’s governments who must take charge of putting in measures for the sake of the public good. Future metaverse users will be under constant surveillance. VR headsets will be tracking what users see, hear, feel and how they react, both physically and mentally. This puts current concerns about how much Google and Facebook/Meta know about us in the shade. In the metaverse, users could be subject to a constant deluge of exceptionally nuanced marketing that taps directly into the emotions felt during virtual experiences. It needs regulation to ensure that users can control who their data is shared with and always know when they are being marketed to, whether they’re watching a video or talking to an avatar. Somehow, limits for manipulation, whether political or commercial, need to be set, so that people are free to enjoy the metaverse without fear of exploitation. 

The metaverse must be built

The consensus is that the Metaverse should be built by communities, rather than by one corporate entity with a guiding hand at best, or ultimate power at worst. Even Zuckerberg seems to agree, stating in his Meta Founder’s Letter that ‘The metaverse will not be created by one company. It will be built by creators and developers making new experiences and digital items that are interoperable and unlock a massively larger creative economy than the one constrained by today’s platforms and their policies’. Though it’s hard to see Facebook’s name change to Meta as anything other than an attempt to ‘own’ the space. 

Just in 2021, Meta spent $10 billion developing metaverse technologies. The company is creating 10,000 jobs in the EU as part of its growth program. It recently invested more than $50 million in non-profit groups to help ‘build the metaverse responsibly’. Other major players turning their attention to the metaverse are Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, Pokémon Go developer Niantic, graphics technology company Nvidia, blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, Microsoft, and Apple. 

Meanwhile Elon Musk believes that his own Neuralink brain interface products will eventually offer a better way to experience virtual reality than spending much of the day trying to move around in a VR headset.

So, the issues of the future metaverse, the problems around trust, privacy, transparency, manipulation, and possible harassment are not just Meta’s to solve. All the more reason why it’s important that government regulations keep up with the technology. 

The metaverse will transform our lives. It could enrich our day-to-day experiences, and even reduce our environmental impact by allowing us to be ‘present’ in the office, ‘attend’ concerts hundreds of miles away, and ‘travel’ to see the world’s sites without ever leaving our homes. 

Like the internet in general, and social media in particular, the metaverse will hold a mirror up to our world. There’s extraordinary potential for good, and equally for bad. Meta and others cannot just go through the motions. To create trust, companies need to demonstrate that they are truly doing all they can to keep users safe. 

Above all, metaverse businesses and governments must work together to build the metaverse we want – a creative, inspiring space worthy of exploration, a place where we feel safe and protected, but have the freedom to make up our own minds. 

1. Founder’s Letter, 2021, Meta, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/

2. Facebook Wants To Attract Young People, But Gen Z Teens Say It’s A ‘Boomer Social Network’ Made For ‘Old People’, Insider, https://www.insider.com/facebook-gen-z-teens-boomer-social-network-leaks-2021-10

3. This 29-Year-Old Book Predicted The ‘Metaverse’ — And Some Of Facebook’s Plans Are Eerily Similar, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/how-the-1992-sci-fi-novel-snow-crash-predicted-facebooks-metaverse.html

4. Facebook Whistleblower Hearing: Frances Haugen Calls For More Regulation Of Tech Giant – As It Happened, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/facebook-hearing-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testifies-us-senate-latest-news

5. Facebook’s Name Change Receives Poor Marks In New Poll, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2021/10/29/facebooks-name-change-receives-poor-marks-in-new-poll/?sh=30c5c49a444b

6. Facebook Will Pay $52 Million In Settlement With Moderators Who Developed PTSD On The Job, The Verge, https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21255870/facebook-content-moderator-settlement-scola-ptsd-mental-health

7. The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

8. ‘I’m Happy To Lose £10m By Quitting Facebook,’ Says Lush Boss, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/26/im-happy-to-lose-10m-by-quitting-facebook-says-lush-boss

9. Ex-Facebook Executive Chamath Palihapitiya: Social Media Is ‘Ripping Apart’ Society CNBC (via YouTube), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MakEIlvlyfE

10. Our New AI System to Help Tackle Harmful Content, Facebook/Meta, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/12/metas-new-ai-system-tackles-harmful-content/

11. Horizon Community, Oculus, https://www.oculus.com/facebook-horizon/community

12. Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well, Techdirt, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well.shtml

13. Founder’s Letter, 2021, Meta, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/

14. Facebook Says It Expects Its Investment In The Metaverse To Reduce Its Profits By ‘Approximately $10 billion’ This Year, Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-metaverse-investment-reduce-profits-by-10-billion-2021-10

15. Investing in European Talent to Help Build the Metaverse, Facebook/Meta, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/creating-jobs-europe-metaverse/

16. Building the Metaverse Responsibly, Facebook/Meta, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/building-the-metaverse-responsibly/

17. Breakthrough Technology For The Brain, Neuralink, https://neuralink.com/

Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee, The Babylon Bee (via YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaRKd4U6Ixg