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    Interview

    Interview: The Future of Stores is Happening Now, with Stewart Samuel, Director of Retail Futures at IGD

    Retailers all over the world are leaning into creating the next generation of store experiences that will drive increasing revenue. Global insight provider IGD recently published an in-depth study on the Stores of the Future that are happening today, centered on 5 themes of emerging trends in the grocery industry.  Stewart Samuel, Director of Retail Futures at IGD, joined us on the podcast to lay out a few of the central themes and how the Future of Stores is coming to life today. 

    Transcript:

    ​​Peter Crosby:
    Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.
    Hey, everyone, Peter Crosby here from The Digital Shelf Institute. Retailers all over the world are leaning into creating the next generation of store experiences that will drive increasing revenue. Global insight provider IGD recently published an in-depth study on the "stores of the future" that are happening today, centered on five themes of emerging trends in the grocery industry. Stewart Samuel, director of Retail Futures at IGD, joined Lauren Livak and me on the podcast to lay out a few of the central themes and how the future of stores is coming to life today.
    Stewart, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I love a good crystal ball, especially when it comes to retail and the stores of the future, so thank you so much for joining us today.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, welcome. Really appreciate being here with you.
    Peter Crosby:
    You kind of need a reason for brick-and-mortar these days. Everyone wants to go back shopping, but they want a reason to. They want an experience. And particularly in these times where everyone's driving for omnichannel profitability, figuring out how to create stores that engage, delight, and convert, I imagine, is a big journey for retailers these days. And so when we saw your Store of the Future report, we just thought, "Well, we have to talk to Stewart." That's all there is to it. So thank you so much, and tell us what you think the store of the future looks like.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I think it's important just to take a step back. You mentioned this challenge of profitability, and what we've seen during the pandemic in particular is that, for me, a lot of the joy of shopping disappeared.
    Peter Crosby:
    [inaudible 00:01:55] right out of it, yes.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah. It became a challenge to go to the stores. When you were in the store, you could only go a certain way down different aisles. Maybe you could only shop certain categories. And then as we've come to this period, maybe ... Can we call it post-recovery? A lot of things haven't actually got that better as well. We've had a lot of supply chain issues, labor issues, and what all those elements are really, I guess, built to do is to make digital shopping a bit more sticky. And people have stuck with digital shopping, and it's hung around, and people have got comfortable with it. But here's the rub, really, is that we know that typically an online sale ... even the best-case scenario with, maybe, store pickup ... is running at a 2% loss. You add in delivery, maybe an 8% loss, compared to, typically, a good 4% margin for a physical in-store sale. So, retailers really have to make those physical stores work well.
    And what we've done, really, with this research is really try to think about, "Okay, what does that store of the future look like, particularly as we've evolved out of the pandemic?" And to do that, we undertook this big global sweep of all the kind of initiatives that we're seeing in place in retail right now. Because we don't actually have this radical vision for the store of the future, where we may have flying drones and tons of robotics and all this kind of stuff that we may think as science fiction, maybe, but we think a lot of the innovations that will build for the store of the future are actually here right now. And we've undertaken that global sweep, identified around 50 different initiatives, and kind of grouped those under five different themes, which we think will help shape those stores of the future.
    Lauren Livak:
    And Stewart, what are the five different themes? I know we're not going to get into all of them, but it'd be great for you to kind of outline what those five are for our listeners.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, we sort of bucketed them into five areas. So things like exciting and experiential, being digitally enabled, highly efficient, omnichannel native, and naturally sustainable. Now, you will get some stores that will reflect maybe all five themes, but I think those stores will be really rare. I think what we'll see is stores will pivot towards two or three of those areas, but not really neglect the other areas as well. So I think it's going to be very rare to have a store that's all-singing, all-dancing, and hitting all five buckets, but I think retailers are really taking a lot of these areas into consideration.
    Lauren Livak:
    So Stewart, let's dive into the "exciting and experiential" one. I feel like that really fits into one of the themes that we heard on another podcast around "infotainment" and the consumers really wanting to have that experience and also be entertained while buying their products. So what are some examples of how you've seen that happen in-store, and how has that really kind of come to light?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I like that idea of infotainment and really sort of giving shoppers reason to visit stores. That's what being exciting and experiential is. Retailers want that physical traffic back in the store because we know it's more profitable, and we have to keep the volume flowing through those stores. And it's about activating a lot of the different sensory elements, the things you can see, you can touch, you can smell. So we know food service plays a big part in this, and we've seen retailers really invest in food to-go models and bring more partnerships into stores to enable them to capture different [inaudible 00:05:23], and maybe drive morning traffic with the breakfast option, and have a lunch option, have some dinner solutions.
    So food service is a critical part of this, but also just the broader store design and the different elements that can really make you go, "Wow." You walk into a store and it's just kind of ... not quite mind-blowing, but it's quite radical and different to your generic supermarket store design. So, it's something that really helps to stand out. And then just the range of products, maybe more localized ranging, the assortment, just things that really create an impact when you're in the store, and maybe some things that you can't get in your regular supermarket as well.
    Lauren Livak:
    And Stewart, do you have an example of that in a store? I think you were mentioning Ahold had an example of how they did that really well.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I think it's one of the standout formats for me. Ahold Delhaize, they launched a new urban flagship under the Giant banner in Philadelphia, and it's just a great store, 'cause I think it does ... Actually, it's probably one of the stores that it leans very much into exciting and experiential, but actually touches on a lot of the other elements as well. So they have this 65,000 square foot store in the downtown, high quality, wide-ranging produce section. It's actually got the retailer's largest plant-based range in the US, actually. As a consumer who wants to buy into that range in that local area, you can go to one store and know they're going to have everything you need, if that's your preference.
    But they're doing amazing counters with the fresh food, with the service counters, they have just an amazing seafood display within that store, the meat counter is fantastic. And then they've done some really great things on the food service with the food hall. They have a beer and wine selection that's amazing. It's all activated by a wristband, so as a consumer, it's, again, easy to access. They have a rooftop patio, so on a summer's day you can go out and enjoy that. It's actually a bit of an experience to go to the store, and you can possibly have reasons to go to that store other than to complete your grocery shop.
    Lauren Livak:
    I kind of think of it as ... People don't always go to Starbucks to buy coffee; they go to Starbucks to sit and do work, or just kind of people-watch, or ... It's just a community. It's a place to go. And I feel like, as you were talking about that example, the experiential shopping is the same way. Why else would you go to a store other than to just buy a product? How can you bring people in for another purpose like that? Like Whole Foods, for example. I go there sometimes just to browse or to just grab a snack and not necessarily grocery shop, but then I'll see a sample and find something that I like and go home with that. So, are you seeing that that is kind of the shift that they're trying to make?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, for sure. If you've ever traveled with me, then I'm a great example of that, where I'll happily go on, open up my laptop, sit in the coworking space or the restaurant area, and do some work, quite often choosing to go to the grocery store, then maybe the Starbucks. And yeah, there are some retailers, probably not in the US, where I've actually seen them start to actually add these dedicated coworking spaces into stores. We've seen it in LatAm in particular; a couple of retailers have done that. And really just giving other reasons to go there, and then if you happen to pick up a couple of products while you're there, then it's all incremental revenue for the retailer, and that's what they're chasing.
    Peter Crosby:
    Yeah, that incremental revenue is kind of key, isn't it, Stewart? And I think about ... How does Ahold or others like them that create these sort of flagship, almost experimental ... like [inaudible 00:09:06] said, throw everything against the wall and see what sticks with consumers. How do you think this plays itself out into Ahold's entire network of grocery stores? Is it that you can't afford to do this everywhere, or that you can't afford not to do this everywhere in some form? Because if your target here is 2030, what does this look like across the years in major grocery chains?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, it's a great question, because often we see a lot of flagship developments happen in isolation. Retail will do something very grand, something very unique, and that's it. They don't roll it out any further. Now, I love the fact that Ahold Delhaize, actually, that they have managed to incorporate elements throughout their store networks, so stores ranging from 15,000 square feet up to this flagship at 60,000 square feet, so even some remodels and new stores now have elements of the flagship within there. Now, you are never going to get everything that's in that flagship replicated elsewhere, because that's the whole point. As you said, throw it at the wall, see what sticks and what works.
    But yeah, the way to do it is to take this modular approach and see, "Okay, yeah, this store is in an urban location. It's going to do great with a food hall concept. Out in suburbia, maybe not so great." And I think that's the playbook that Ahold Delhaize has, is, "Okay, what works a hundred percent in the flagship?" and then "Okay, let's look at it from either a location point of view, a catchment, a shop, a demographic. What's going to work in other areas?" And it's quite pleasing to see them roll that out to other stores in the estate as well, and it really becomes the blueprint, if you like, for the remodel program as we all head towards 2030.
    Peter Crosby:
    Yeah, the math of that is so-
    Lauren Livak:
    That's true, I also-
    Peter Crosby:
    Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead.
    Lauren Livak:
    I was just thinking about how Kohl's added Amazon returns in their store. And in the beginning, I remember when it first started, it was in the front of the store, and then they changed it and it was all the way in the back of the store, so you had to walk all the way through Kohl's to get to the Amazon return counter. And so when I think about what you're talking about in terms of experience, it doesn't necessarily have to be the experience of the store, because going into a Kohl's to return an Amazon package ... That was the purpose why you were going in, but you might see something on the way there as you're shopping that you might pick up. So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the experience doesn't have to be exactly aligned with the retailer itself. It can just be an added value to the consumer, and I don't know if you've seen any other examples like that.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, definitely bringing added value services is things we're seeing, and Amazon is a classic because there's lots of retailers ... I've even been to 7-Eleven stores that have the Amazon locker in there. So retailers, sometimes you think, "Oh, that's quite a competing retailer." I think the key thing with choosing the different partners is just making sure there is an alignment between the core retail brand and the partner that you're bringing in, because you are kind of ideally targeting a similar kind of shopper with the offer, so you want to have some degree of alignment. But there can be partnerships where you can actually, "Hey, no, I need to target a younger consumer, bring a different shopper group into my store network. Okay, I'm going to go out and partner with, maybe, a different food service brand, and maybe a local brand that really does cater to that particular market."
    So it's a fine balance, though, between having this sense of alignment between the core brand and the brand partner, and actually doing something a little bit different because you are chasing a slightly different shopper group and want to bring that brand into your store. So yeah, I think with the Ahold Delhaize, they have a good partnership with Saladworks. So they have some of their own in-house food service developed brands, and then they brought Saladworks in as well, because maybe that's bringing a different customer than would typically be in an Ahold Delhaize store for a meal solution, for example.
    Peter Crosby:
    And Stewart, one of the other themes that you had was that retail should be omnichannel native, and so I'd love to know, one, what that means to you in your study, and then how you're seeing it come to life out in the world.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, when we talk about omnichannel native, what we try to think about is this kind of seamless path for the consumer. 'Cause some of it can be quite clunky, between ordering on your mobile or on your app at home, and then getting to the store, and maybe the service isn't quite aligned, or you're waiting there for your order and things don't work out. All that sort of goodwill that's built up can get destroyed in a moment, really.
    And this is where we see a lot of technology being utilized, just trying to create that really smooth pickup experience. So maybe things like using geofencing technology, where you're using the app and you're automatically notifying the store that you are two miles away, so then that retailer, then, can start to get that order assembled from the staging area and actually have it almost immediately in the trunk of your car, almost before you've turned up to collect it. There may be the opportunity to add some additional products. You may have forgotten something to add to your order. "Actually, can I add that jug of milk or soft drink or something to my order whilst I'm already there for the pickup?"
    We often talk about omnichannel ease, so it's kind of quite a smooth operation between being at home and ordering and getting to the store, and it all kind of works seamlessly, and in most cases, there's often quite of a breakdown in that part of the experience.
    Peter Crosby:
    It's an expensive thing to do, yeah? To be able to create that ease is really hard and costly. And I was wondering, how are you seeing retailers sort of ... Is it through the additional "add more items to cart"? Is it things like that? Are they seeing, to your knowledge, greater cart sizes when they have that ease? Is there any way to draw results to that, other than convenience for the consumer?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, typically we see retailers that attract shoppers into multiple channels, so shopping online and shopping through the physical stores. Transactions levels are typically two and a half to three times larger, and the spend raises in a similar way as well. So we know, for a retailer, they want to capture that omnichannel shopper, or the multi-channel shopper, who's shopping both physical and online, because it is overall a more profitable and a higher-spending shopper for the retailer. But you're right, Peter, it is challenging to really make that pickup experience or that delivery experience to be truly remarkable and to be, as we talked about, this exciting experiential moment when you're in the store. Very, very, very few people do I meet say, "Wow, that was an amazing and delightful pickup experience," or delivery experience. But that's the kind of place that they probably want to get to, and again, things like automation and technology can help there as well.
    Peter Crosby:
    Can you give us an example of a retailer that's doing a good job of this right now?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I probably want to cast my eye a little bit further afield than the US for this one, and Alibaba in China with the Freshippo format is probably a leading example, and probably one of the ones that gets studied and looked at quite a bit. The whole experience in the store is controlled via an app. The stores are cash-free, they're using automated picking solutions, micro fulfillment, ghost kitchens, and there's really rapid delivery solutions. So around 65% of the store order is done digitally, and so it's done through online orders, and all that data is processed in real time. It gives lots of transparency to the consumers, and then they can use that data to continue to refine the store operation, and the layout, and all the other things they can do to integrate things with that data. But that's probably one of the highest proportion of digital sales that we've seen in any physical store, but they've kind of created infrastructure that really enables that.
    Peter Crosby:
    I'm sure Amazon's giving that a look as they try to figure out ...
    Lauren Livak:
    I was just going to say that.
    Peter Crosby:
    They'll add onto it, yeah. Yeah, no-
    Lauren Livak:
    It's like the Amazon store where you walk in and you sign in with your Amazon account, you go in, you pick up a product and you leave, and it charges you automatically. I've been to one of those in New York. Is it similar to that?
    Peter Crosby:
    But they kind of killed it, right? Amazon's-
    Lauren Livak:
    Yeah, they're not expanding it, I don't believe.
    Peter Crosby:
    That's what I was wondering, Stewart, if you're seeing whether that kind of thing is not happening here because the consumers don't want it, or because they really haven't figured it out to the degree that Alibaba has.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I think it's a bit of both. So we know that North American consumers love to visit stores. You love to get in your cars, drive to a store, and spend that time walking around. And in Asia, a lot more things are done digitally. It's not just grocery shopping, but almost every aspect of your life, there's a digital platform that enables those different services and products to be bought and experienced, and that's not just how we've always typically done things in North America. Now, can we say with Gen Z, with different generational change, whether that might change? You kind of think it might, but everything I hear is like, "Oh, Gen Z love the experience even more than we do."
    Peter Crosby:
    They're a stubborn bunch, aren't they?
    Stewart Samuel:
    So, it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves. But I think there's also a piece, Peter, there as well that you mentioned, that we haven't quite figured out how to do all of that yet. Now, Amazon Fresh is a good example in the US. A lot of those stores, if you've ever been inside them, there's a lot of people working in those stores picking online orders. So for Amazon, they actually do work almost like a [inaudible 00:19:29] store. It's a fulfillment location for a lot of the Amazon Fresh orders. What they've done a little bit differently on the front end, actually ... If you don't want to shop via an app and have that [inaudible 00:19:43] experience, you can actually shop that store as you would any other regular supermarket as well. So they're giving some options to consumers, which is probably quite a smart move given that we're not all there and fully digitally enabled and into all this tech all the time, so I think giving the optionality.
    But yeah, I know you mentioned some of the closures. Yeah, they have paused the rollout of both Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go whilst they continue to refine the model. And quite recently, they've spoken twice about this need to find a mass-market format that they can scale and deploy, and it's going to be interesting, I think, to see what comes of that. Maybe it's a topic for another session, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be some acquisition activity in that space for Amazon if they want to get to the mass market at pace.
    Peter Crosby:
    Be fascinating to watch.
    Lauren Livak:
    Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if they have a healthcare spin on that with their new acquisition, but definitely another conversation that we can get into. But Stewart, what I was going to say is, technology seems to be kind of at the root of a lot of this, right? Like technology through the app on your phone, through a digital experience in store. What are you seeing with in-store digital media, digital displays? Is that also a really big trend, kind of bringing that digital experience into the physical store?
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, it's growing exponentially, I would say, in-store digital media. So I think we've all become quite familiar with retail media networks and all the different programs that the retailers have for their branded manufacturers to do a lot of exciting things online and be very intentional and personalized with their campaigns, and what we're seeing now is the expansion of that into the physical environment. And it's probably one of the areas where, maybe, I wouldn't say the US is late to the game, but there are some other leaders in other parts of the world that have moved a little bit faster and maybe have done the physical piece before they've done the online piece. So, we're kind of coming at it from a different angle.
    But yeah, increasingly we're seeing a lot of in-store screens being deployed in store, and I think what's interesting ... They're being deployed in lots of different areas of the store. And we've just done a study on this, and it's actually incredible in terms of the different opportunities that branded manufacturers have to put their products in front of people in that sort of physical environment. And sometimes you think of it, well, maybe it's just a digital sign at the front of the store where they can put some branded advertisings, but we've long had the digital boards at the food service counters, for example, so they're there.
    But now these stores that have, maybe, things like the smart trolleys, the smart shopping carts ... You can actually put in ads into some of those screen displays there. I've seen retailers start to test and play with ads within the handheld devices that you use for the self scanning, for shopping at the self-checkout, some ads at the end of that. We were familiar with the checkout walk online, but that sort of checkout walk when you just almost finished your transaction, "Hey do you want to add this item your order?" at the self-checkout.
    So it's kind of expanding quite quickly, and I'm seeing different solutions being deployed in lots of the different parts of the store. I think what's interesting right now is that the retailers are getting a lot of good metrics over there, so there's some good stats being posted in terms of sales uplift and brand recall. I'm just curious whether this is ... not a novelty factor, but because they kind of stand out right now, and there are not many stores with these different solutions. If they become so widespread they become sort of commonplace, are they then as effective in driving those uplifts?
    Peter Crosby:
    Yeah, and then it just becomes noise in the experience rather than curated.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, it just kind of blurs into the shopping experience. You become a bit more blind to some of that messaging. But so far, the results are pretty impressive, and I've seen numbers quoted between 200-300% sales uplifts when they're used on a promotional end, as an end cap, for example. So it's moving at pace, and I think back to this issue of retailer profitability. It's a great monetization play for the retailers as well, just as the online retail media networks are as well.
    Peter Crosby:
    I worry about our poor brands in this situation, but if you're getting that kind of uplift, then maybe it works. Maybe the math works for both of them.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I think the challenge, when I talk to the brands, is that it's not new money. There's not incremental money for this; it's coming from somewhere else. I think if the retailers want to be truly successful with it, they have to show the incrementality and draw incremental spend from the branded manufacturers, that it's not just being switched from other in-store activity that they're doing or other promotional spend that they have, that actually, it can be additional spend by the brands.
    Lauren Livak:
    Stewart, are you seeing retailers really double down on their apps, like their native applications? So like Walmart app or the Amazon ... maybe not the Amazon app, but ones that have a brick-and-mortar presence where, if you're in-store and you're using the app, maybe there's a specific coupon or discount. I'm just curious if that is also something that is being more of a focus, since people are using their phones while shopping in-store.
    Stewart Samuel:
    It's definitely starting to be tested, I would say, rather than being deployed widely. We've seen some retailers start to test in-app ads, so when you're in the store, running some branded ads in there, and coupons could be, easily, part of this. I think there's this fine balance, when you're in-store, between being helpful and being intrusive, and really striking that balance. Suddenly, you get an ad as soon as you walk into the store. Okay, you're alert, then, to that ... That retailer knows you're in the store. And there are some technical ... I wouldn't say barriers, but typically they work best when you are hooked onto the retailer's wifi in the store, and we know a lot of consumers, when they've got free and easy data, that they don't typically do that as well. But yeah, definitely seeing a lot of testing of in-app ads and think promotional deals would definitely be part of that, leveraging things like geofencing technology.
    Back to the Amazon Fresh, I kind of like what they've done with their dash cart in the stores there, because as you're walking down an aisle, on that screen terminal where you're scanning your products, if you're suddenly walking past a deal, it'll actually alert you on that screen to say, "Hey, you've just missed this," or, "There's a deal on this shelf right next to you here." So I think in that case, it's super helpful. It's not being personalized yet at that stage. It's more of a generic ad. It doesn't matter who's using that shopping cart; it'll tell you there's a deal there. But I think the next stage of that, maybe, is then to start to personalize some of the offers that are being delivered.
    Peter Crosby:
    Well, because I think so much of this is trying to get more juice out of every squeeze, out of every visit. You want to get as much as you can, and we know, even from the old days of email marketing, that when you A/B test and you personalize, guess what? It performs better. And so doing that at scale in this experience and then in product detail pages, et cetera, I think is just a natural evolution of this, don't you think?
    Stewart Samuel:
    I do. And what we're seeing now, particularly with AI and machine learning, is that this can be done at pace and at scale, and, interestingly, in real time as well. So you can start to see those homepages being designed, those product pages being redesigned as they're getting that constant feedback from shoppers, and you can just think that that could actually be replicated in-store as well. So suddenly, if there's a couple of ads and promotions that are showing some uplift, one, it can be sent super quickly to all the other stores in the network so they're kind of displaying similar ads, and two, I think for the shopper it becomes more of a relevant experience, if you like. And if you're helping a consumer save money, for example, in today's climate, things like that can really drive brand loyalty and create more of a hook for that retailer and that shopper.
    Peter Crosby:
    Well, certainly one stat that I know will increase in this, given these experiences, is grocery cart collisions will go up dramatically, because everyone's looking at their damn screens instead of paying attention to who's in the aisle.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah. I'm not sure who's measuring that yet, but maybe there's a business idea there, possibly.
    Peter Crosby:
    Or just have medics standing by for all cases.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah.
    Peter Crosby:
    When you look out to the 2030 timeframe, Stewart, and you think all the clients that you folks advise and work with, do you have a sense of winners and losers in this? Is it existential to do these things in your mind? I'm just wondering how you're seeing all of this play out and what the sector might look like at the end of the next seven years or something like that.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I think what's interesting is that we are definitely seeing that scale helps. And for a long time, scale was great, then scale was bad, and I think now, again, scale is great again, because what that scale does is just enable the investment, and a lot of this technology means heavy investment in a lot of legacy IT infrastructure and architecture really to make a lot of the new technologies work. The old platforms have to either be replaced or rewired, and there's a lot of heavy lifting that has to happen there. So, people like Walmart. I've been tracking Walmart for the last 10 years, and they've been, probably, the retailer that I think is really running at pace at this and is probably the one to watch now. They do have the scale and the resources to do a lot of this in-house, and they've done it, and they probably will continue to set the pace in a lot of this.
    I think what's interesting as well, though, is that we have such a great culture of innovation startups in North America, that actually, there is a whole wave of companies that really are democratizing technology for even the smallest retailers. So what we're seeing is that, maybe a while ago, some of that really cutting-edge technology could only be afforded by the very largest retailers. Now, even your small independent retailer can have a smart cart in their store, they can have digital shelf-edge labels, they can have the apps. So all this technology is now freely ... not freely, but is freely available to a lot of the retailers who probably before could never conceive of having these type of capabilities. So, you have that kind of happening at one end.
    We definitely know that scale is also helping as well, and we've just got to look at the Albertsons and Kroger proposed merger. Albertsons is running at almost 80 billion a year. You think that's a big business, right? And Kroger at 140 billion plus, but they kind of feel like they need each other. And again, a lot of this is around the efficiencies that they can generate, particularly on the digital side, but also with some of those alternative revenue streams they're developing, like retail media, where scale can make a big difference to them as well. So I think we'll definitely see more consolidation within our industry as we go forward, and a lot of that will be because they will need to partner up, come together, particularly some of the smaller retailers, potentially, just to make the investments they need, really to keep pace with some of those leaders in this area.
    Peter Crosby:
    We'll see how the regulators go along with that. It's going to be interesting to watch the consolidation in this industry over time, but I think you're absolutely right. We're seeing this kind of ... As you said, it goes back and forth, and now we're in a period where being legacy and having the investment path to be able to do things like this, and the investment in retail media, et cetera, is ... It's definitely going to the incumbents.
    So Stewart, thank you so much for bringing this study to us. You've been very kind and made a magic little URL available to our listeners to get the full study. You can go to retailanalysis.igd.com, retailanalysis.igd.com. Thanks so much for making that available to our listeners, we really appreciate it. And thank you for joining us.
    Stewart Samuel:
    Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, Peter. Great to chat with you.
    Peter Crosby:
    Thanks again to Stewart for all the insights. Again, that link is retaileranalysis.igd.com. Stay in touch with everything coming from the DSI and our partners at digitalshelfinstitute.org. Thanks for being part of our community.