Last week, to coincide with CIIE being hosted in Shanghai, AustCham hosted a discussion and panel on the future of New Retail at the Westin Bund Centre – New Retail: Making Retail Great Again.

Jerry lead out the session by discussing how China is leading the New Retail ‘revolution’; then Zhang shared Alibaba’s vision for retail in China; with Plotnick discussing how brands can best leverage new developments in this area.

After each speaker shared their perspectives, there was a lively panel discussion with questions from an enthusiastic crowd who joined the event.

Key perspectives and discussions from the event included:

• That New Retail, while more advanced in China than elsewhere, is still in its infancy
• New Retail represents a response to the limits of traditional retail. Now retailers have the opportunity to leverage data to provide consumers a deeper consumer experience
• Due to the local reality that large tech companies can now combine e-commerce and payment assets to access SKU-level data, means New Retail is advancing faster here in China than elsewhere
• New Retail is being embraced more readily by Chinese consumers due to the reality that traditional retail was not delivering on locals’ increasing expectations
• Alibaba is championing New Retail as it represents the best way to optimize revenue yield from retail space, an increasingly rare and expensive commodity in China
• New Retail offers marketers a more intuitive way to sell to consumers due to a wider set of data they can now access, meaning they can be less reliant on intrusive and disruptive mediums such as pop-up ads