Future forecasting is termed as the process of making various predictions in relation to the future trends in business. It relates to the present data available and most common analysis of trends. With the help of statistical tools and future implementation of services in the firm, it is quite vital for the firms to forecast their future prospects. In order to implement the future prospects of business within the firm, internet services are utilised that helps in developing advanced features (Tidd and Thuriaux?Alemán 2016). This is termed as freemium in the field of management. To enhance the business techniques within the company, digitalisation and dematerialisation are considered as one of the important aspects. Digitalisation helps in using various forms of upgraded technologies that would provide new and better enhanced value producing opportunities for the companies (Lenka et al. 2016). This would be efficient enough for moving to a digital business. Dematerialisation aims at reducing the materials that are being used within the firm thereby enacting the required productivity for the firm with a reduced form of resources being used. With the help of such enhancements in business, the organization are being able to provide a customized product for their customers that would help in provide an improvised version for fulfilling the requirements of the consumers.
The retail industry in United Kingdom has been considered as one of the largest private sector of the country. It has been quite vital in raising the gross domestic product of the economy. The operations of the retail sector in the country have been established in the recent years with the help of innovative techniques that has helped in formulating the efficiency of the consumers. By keeping the current improvisations and needs of the consumers in mind, a business strategy has been developed for the retail sector of the country. This business strategy would be efficient enough to utilise dematerialisation, digitalisation and individualism prospects for the consumers. The grocery retail industry of United Kingdom has been providing the products to its customers by allowing them to choose the products from a wide variety of display, paying their bills and taking their selected products home. This system seems to be quite convenient in nature, yet it has various drawbacks thereby increasing the discrepancies of the customers (Day et al. 2014). In order to enhance the function of such system, digitalisation of the display stores have been stated that would induce the use of technologies in accessing the products, payment for products, dematerialisation of resources and increasing the efficiency of the industry.
The objectives related to such business strategy are that it could provide the industry with enhanced accessibility and feasibility that would provide better growth of the sector and lesser use of resources. These facilities would be efficient enough to improvise the availabilities of the firm and provide their consumers with a better scope for enjoying the services (Gish 2014). This would help in reducing the discrepancies within the shopping style of the consumers and increase the productivity of the industry.
Megatrends in an organization are quite vital in establishing a modernized path for the long run stability of an industry. Megatrends tend to bring prosperity and aging along with a great deal of knowledge in the future. It helps in reshaping the probable future of the firm. Megatrends help in defining the present and the future worlds of the industry that helps in reshaping the scenarios of the companies. It is quite helpful in accessing the importance of megatrends for framing the strategic framework of the organization (Hartley, Sørensen and Torfing 2013).
According to Drucker (2014), Future forecasting is considered quite essential for making decisions in the organization, in order to deal with the future prospects of business. The complexities of the firm and their surroundings has made it quite difficult for making decisions to take all the factors relating to the future development of the company that has been taken into account. Organizations have gained the ability to move towards better and systematic decision-making ability that would involve them into explicit justifications for the individual actions and formalised forecasting to support the actions. Various studies have been conducted to analyse the effect of future forecasting on organizations. Case studies have even taken into consideration that would help in addressing the issues additional to those covered in qualitative investigations being carried out. Organization has chosen computer based and scanned methods of covering the identified surveyfor analysing the effect of future forecasting in their firm.
In order to analyse the innovations that could be carried within the framework of the firm to analyse the future trends in business, specific aspects could be used by the firm such as dematerialization, digitalization and individualism. Gathering various data and analytics across all channels are considered quite vital to success in the retail stores. It helps in generating useful data insights that helps in formulating the business skilfully and efficiently (Kuratko 2016). Dematerialization in the retail industry has provided the incentive of using the resources more efficiently that would help in raising the income of the firms. Hence, it could be stated that in order to analyse the megatrends for an industry, it is quite vital to overview various scope for upgrading the system of the firm.
Mega-trends mostly form a base for strategic decision-making in order to acknowledge their impact on managerial functions such as marketing. A strategic decision-making is referred to as an ongoing procedure that involves the generation of strategies that involves selling of products at a lower price. The increase of the entrepreneurial individual is referred to as the gig economy at present that in turn leads to new challenges as well as prospects for entrepreneurs (Hajkowicz 2015). The Dow Theory that differentiates the entire direction of the market mostly incorporates major trend analyses (Delgoda et al. 2016). However, it is imperative to first note that when the major trends in the market moves towards a general direction, it does not do so in a straight line. Three trends in the market are mostly analysed with the help of the Dow Theory such as primary, minor and secondary. However, the Dow Theory considers the primary trend as it is considered as the key trend of the market. The primary trend is the major direction towards which the market moves. However, the secondary trend moves towards the opposite direction of the primary trend. The driving forces behind megatrends are exclusive as well as complicated. The third law of motion of Newton also leads to imperative trends in the retail industry. The key focus is to minimize CAPEX (capital expenditure) that leads to raising competition from service providers that leads to diminish in marginal profit (Vernimmen et al. 2014).
The mega trend dematerialization illustrates the change of mindset of the individuals. The physical commodity makes place for experiences as well as activities around the commodity. The new era of dematerialization is mostly predominated by value added services. Retail industry ofUnited Kingdom has undergone various implementations that helps in exercising better services and providing better facilities to the people. Retailers have been quite efficient in understanding their customers that are well enough to anticipate the needs and services more effectively than the competition (Choi 2013). Hyper-relevance is considered as one of the basic goals of the retailers in the country that enables the consumers to receive what they want, when they want and how they want it. Better techniques and solutions have been implemented in the industry that thereby increases the efficiency of the services and raises the income in this sector.
Business proposal: In order to promote megatrends on the retail industry of United Kingdom, there are three relevant aspects that has been taken into consideration in this business opportunity. These aspects could be named as digitalization, dematerialization and individualism. The future of retail industry in the country would be a technologically upgraded system, where the firms in the industry would be under the subjection of application softwares. These application softwares would be highly digitalized that would be efficient enough to track the customers of the stores (Hood, Clarke and Clarke 2016). These consumers would be able to list their orders through the app tracks, attain their products on their doorstep and pay the price through monthly invoice payments. This would help in reducing the staff members to be employed in the retail industry, as the customers would be self sufficient in analysing their needs. This would lead to dematerialization in the industry. By implementing such technological implementations done, individualism is followed in the industry that would help in projecting the megatrend of the industry (Hajkowicz 2015).
Figure 1: Retail sector trends in united kingdom
(SOURCE: Bruwer et al. 2014)
The cost pressures, rise in inflation and slow wage growth of United Kingdom has shown a considerable impact on the consumer confidence and thereby dampen the demand of the firm. Retailers in the country have been showing considerable ongoing disruption from the wave of digital technologies and thereby need to prioritise their investment techniques in the technology. It would help in adding the value to the customers benefit and raise the efficiency in which the operations could be carried on. In the last ten years, there has been an unprecedented upheaval; however, in the year 2017, the retailers have to focus on accelerating the transformation associated in their business. There has been a rise in the retail sales of the industry in the firm by 7.1% in December (Bruwer et al. 2014). the store sales of the firm have risen by 4.6% while the e commerce operations of the industry have risen up to a level of 21.8%. The growth of the retail sector in the country has been showing a considerable rise by the use of online shopping services through the smartphones up by an estimated 50% (Nguyen 2016). In the upcoming year, it has been stated that the retail sector of United Kingdom needs to implement certain services that would help in attaining the following profitability as follows:
Figure 2: online sales growth in united kingdom
(SOURCE:Nguyen 2016)
The retail segment of the country is set to see another tipping point in e-commerce growth. The online applications in the retail sector of the country are having a greater impact on the traditional sellers of the industry. The firms of the retail sector have to maintain new balance needs to be struck between transaction and fulfilment. The store experience of the sectors would implement inspiration and convenience. The retail sector has been implementing certain technological upgradational facilities that would use certain voice user interfaces to provide the consumers with natural and intuitive ways of engaging the technologies digitally (Fernie 2014).
Conclusion
The retail industry in United Kingdom has been considered as one of the largest private sector of the country. It has been quite vital in raising the gross domestic product of the economy. In order to analyse the innovations that could be carried within the framework of the firm to analyse the future trends in business, specific aspects could be used by the firm such as dematerialization, digitalization and individualism. The operations of the retail sector in the country have been established in the recent years with the help of innovative techniques that has helped in formulating the efficiency of the consumers. Megatrends help in defining the present and the future worlds of the industry that helps in reshaping the scenarios of the companies. It is quite helpful in accessing the importance of megatrends for framing the strategic framework of the organization (Day et al. 2014). Hence, the aspects of megatrends in the retail sector of the country would help in framing a bright future of the sector and improve the conditions of the industry in the rear future.
References
Bruwer, J., Burrows, N., Chaumont, S., Li, E. and Saliba, A., 2014. Consumer involvement and associated behaviour in the UK high-end retail off-trade wine market. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 24(2), pp.145-165.
Choi, T.M. ed., 2013. Fast fashion systems: Theories and applications. CRC Press.
Day, J.W., Moerschbaecher, M., Pimentel, D., Hall, C. and Yáñez-Arancibia, A., 2014. Sustainability and place: How emerging mega-trends of the 21st century will affect humans and nature at the landscape level. Ecological Engineering, 65, pp.33-48.
Delgoda, D., Malano, H., Saleem, S.K. and Halgamuge, M.N., 2016. Irrigation control based on model predictive control (MPC): Formulation of theory and validation using weather forecast data and AQUACROP model. Environmental Modelling & Software, 78, pp.40-53.
Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Fernie, J., 2014. 02 Relationships in the supply chain. Logistics and retail management: Emerging issues and new challenges in the retail supply chain, p.35.
Gish, L., 2014. Case 3.2 Tha Alpha Pro pump: A case study of innovation. In Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation. Sage Publications, Incorporated.
Hajkowicz, S., 2015. Global megatrends: seven patterns of change shaping our future. CSIRO PUBLISHING.
Hartley, J., Sørensen, E. and Torfing, J., 2013. Collaborative innovation: A viable alternative to market competition and organizational entrepreneurship. Public Administration Review, 73(6), pp.821-830.
Hood, N., Clarke, G. and Clarke, M., 2016. Segmenting the growing UK convenience store market for retail location planning. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 26(2), pp.113-136.
Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.
Lenka, S., Parida, V., Sjödin, D.R. and Wincent, J., 2016. Digitalization and advanced service innovation: How digitalization capabilities enable companies to co-create value with customers.
Nguyen, A.T., 2016. The United Kingdom’s Grocery E-Commerce Supply Chain: A qualitative analysis and comparison with Vietnamese Market.
Tidd, J., and Thuriaux?Alemán, B. 2016. Innovation management practices: cross?sectorial adoption, variation, and effectiveness. R&D Management.
Vernimmen, P., Quiry, P., Dallocchio, M., Le Fur, Y. and Salvi, A., 2014. Corporate finance: theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.
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