Retail sector has witnessed significant growth both globally and domestically during the period 2015-2020. Affected by various factors, the sector has also experienced important disruptions, shaping a new modern era for the Retail sector. “The Future of Retail Sector” survey conducted by KPMG in Greece explores the Greek Retail’s sector structure, size, and growth, as well as its financial trends. Furthermore, a more detailed analysis of each retail sub sector is presented through financial measures of key market players. Finally, the survey focuses on the sector’s future path, highlighting retail trends, consumers’ behaviors and technologies that will shape the sector’s outlook.
Key findings:
- Despite the consequences of the pandemic, the Greek Retail sector experienced a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.6% from 2015 to 2020 in terms of turnover.
- The Retail sector is the 2nd most important employer for the Greek economy, employing about 10.6% of all the employed personnel in the economy.
- Apart from Grocery and Consumer Electronics sub sectors, the rest of Retail sub sectors recorded a declining turnover in 2020.
- COVID-19 pandemic transformed the sector in various ways, leading to the rise of E-commerce, redefining consumers’ habits and priorities and disrupting supply chains.
The prevailing trends for Retailers and Consumers are:
- Focus on ESG initiatives
- Embrace of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions
- Omnichannel customer approach
- Interest in information on product life cycle
- Preference on healthy and affordable products
- Adoption of E-Commerce, Q-Commerce and Online-To-Offline Commerce
The post-pandemic era will lead the Retail sector into new pathways, driven by technological breakthroughs and changes in consumers’ behavior. Extended Reality (XR), Blockchain and 3D-Prinitng are only some of the technologies to lead the transformation of Retail sector. Meanwhile, online shopping is already growing and will continue to grow forcing retailers to adjust to the new ecosystem. In addition, retailers are focusing their attention on omnichannel customer approach, while obsessing over customer experience across all channels to ensure customer satisfaction. After COVID-19 pandemic, digital channels will increasingly be preferred as the main way of communication between brands and customers, leading to a gradual decrease in the use of face-to-face channels.
