It’s long been touted that the growth of ecommerce and sliding in-store sales will usher in a retailpocalypse. Last year saw a bevy of retailers and malls, unable to keep pace with the price and convenience shoppers find online, close up shop.

But 2018 has delivered some encouraging signs for brick-and-mortar stores. Major retailers, Target and Walmart, both saw growth in same-store sales last quarter. Walmart even saw a small uptick in shopper visits.

Though modest, these gains tell a story of merchants rethinking how best to use their physical space and embracing an omnichannel retail future. This blending of the best aspects of physical and digital shopping—or what we like to call “phy-gital”—makes the experience not only more convenient and seamless, but also more tangible and human.

The idea of a retail future neither entirely physical nor digital has perhaps been most enthusiastically embraced by the bogeyman of in-store shopping: Amazon. Along with its physical bookstores stocking titles known to successfully sell locally, the digital behemoth has expanded into the grocery aisle with its acquisition of Whole Foods and continues to experiment with its automated convenience stores. The company may open as many as 6 new Amazon Go stores this year.

Such moves continue to raise the bar for what shoppers have come to expect from the in-store experience: We now see efforts to make retail spaces must-attend destinations through a blend of emerging technology and entertainment. A showroom with tech tools such as VR transports consumers into a virtual world where they see themselves engaging with a product. While VR can place customers inside a separate, fully immersive simulated shopping experience, AR is able to superimpose images or data overreality to reveal details about a product. Another in-store tech innovation: Magic mirrors that let you see how you look in an outfit without even trying it on.

Below is a chart from our ZEITGUIDE 2018 Q1 that highlights examples of retailers utilizing in-store tech and entertainment. Make sure you order your ZEITGUIDE 2018 quarterly subscription to see how this cultural narrative will evolve, and impact you as both a professional and a consumer.

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