In his new book, BIONIC RETAIL: HOW TO THRIVE IN AN EXPONENTIAL WORLD, author Gary Hawkins discusses how the pace of change outside organizations is accelerating faster than within, creating a growing gap between what once made retail successful and what will be required in the future. There is often a disconnect between shopper expectations and the traditional store, and retail brands must pivot and adapt to remain relevant and achieve success.
Hawkins grew up in grocery retail, and his family once owned stores in the wholesale business in Upstate New York. It was in one of those stores, nearly 30 years ago, where Hawkins launched one of the first loyalty programs in the U.S. supermarket retail sector. The program served as a leader in the industry, providing much learning around customer data, shopping behavior, customer-level economics, and more. Eventually, his efforts switched to assisting other prominent retailers in the U.S. and around the world with a focus on capturing, understanding, and using shopper data. From there, Hawkins worked with bigger brands before moving to technological pursuits.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Hawkins about his book, the exponential environment brands operate in today, and how change outside an organization moves more quickly than change on the inside.
In his new book, BIONIC RETAIL: HOW TO THRIVE IN AN EXPONENTIAL WORLD, author Gary Hawkins discusses how the pace of change outside organizations is accelerating faster than within, creating a growing gap between what once made retail successful and what will be required in the future. There is often a disconnect between shopper expectations and the traditional store, and retail brands must pivot and adapt to remain relevant and achieve success.
Hawkins grew up in grocery retail, and his family once owned stores in the wholesale business in Upstate New York. It was in one of those stores, nearly 30 years ago, where Hawkins launched one of the first loyalty programs in the U.S. supermarket retail sector. The program served as a leader in the industry, providing much learning around customer data, shopping behavior, customer-level economics, and more. Eventually, his efforts switched to assisting other prominent retailers in the U.S. and around the world with a focus on capturing, understanding, and using shopper data. From there, Hawkins worked with bigger brands before moving to technological pursuits.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Hawkins about his book, the exponential environment brands operate in today, and how change outside an organization moves more quickly than change on the inside.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I want to welcome you back to another edition of our Authors and Academics series, where we look at topics and trends that impact customer channel and brand loyalty. Through the unique lens, it helps to give an enhanced perspective on the challenge or opportunity. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Gary Hawkins. He's the author of Buying at Retail how to Thrive in an Explanation World. Gary's book discusses how the pace of change outside organizations is accelerating faster than within, which creates a gap between what can make retail successful and what may be required in the future. This is a widening gap between shopper expectations and the traditional store, and how there's a need right now for retailers to pivot and adapt to remain relevant and be able to achieve success. So thank you very much, gary, for taking the time to talk to us today. How are you?
Speaker 2:
Great thanks, mark. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. We'd like to start this on a more personal level. We'd like to know a little bit more about you, your background working with retailers and CPG brands and what led you to write the book.
Speaker 2:
All right, great. So long story I'll make as brief as possible. I literally grew up in grocery retail. My family owned some stores and a wholesale business years back in the upstate New York area wholesale business years back in the upstate New York area and it was in one of our stores. I launched one of the first loyalty programs in the US supermarket retail sector nearly 30 years ago. Wound up being sort of on the leading edge of that whole movement, helping lead a lot of early industry learning around customer data, true customer shopping behavior, customer level economics and so on. That quickly segued over into helping other prominent retailers here, other markets around the world, with capturing, understanding using shopper data. That segued over into the big brands and then more and more into the world of technology.
Speaker 1:
Okay, when you look at the book Bionic Retail how to Thrive in an Exponential World. Can you give us a high-level overview of the book and why you wrote it?
Speaker 2:
Sure. What really drove me to write it was I became more and more frustrated that I saw retail executives being focused on the next shiny object, the next cool technology, and missing what I felt was the bigger picture that we're now living in, this exponential world of accelerating technology growth and, as you said a few minutes ago, the pace of change outside organizations accelerating and speeding up far more than it is inside. So I wanted to help retail executives understand the exponential world and then provide some guidance to how they can make that leap to the exponential path to the future, in a way, from what I refer to as the path to purgatory.
Speaker 1:
Okay, in the book you discuss how retail technology must or should change to reflect an evolving society. We see that from a customer loyalty perspective. We have an analyst process where you assess different technologies and there is a challenge of technology doesn't always do what it says it's going to do. They don't have the integrations and invariably, to add some of it, can be significantly challenging from a financial perspective getting that organizational alignment. So when you look at the evolving technology and being able to address and understand the customer shopping habits, retail operations in this time of economic uncertainty, how can value be created in this new environment?
Speaker 2:
You know how can value be created in this new environment? Well, certainly, ultimately it comes down to you know, understanding the shopper. And today it's understanding the individual shopper and what interests them, what motivates them, you know what excites them. You know what excites them and it's leveraging those insights to provide that individual shopper with some blend of price, of experience of products and so on that it's going to engage them. And that's a world really tailor-made for artificial intelligence and some of the technologies that are available today. It allows even the largest companies to truly work at an individual customer level at scale. You know, leveraging AI.
Speaker 1:
Okay, when you look at some of the challenges with regard to brands, what do you see with what the opportunity may be? You know, bandwidth is something that we see. Truly understanding the technology is a challenge as well, and they obviously coincide. And another thing too is getting kind of their line in the queue. Ranking their place in the queue, should I say because the queue is longer. Brands, for a period of time, were doing more development in-house. Now we're going back external, moving away from centers of excellence internally, but even getting a place in line can be a big challenge for brands as well. What are the challenges you see with these different technologies, these convergent technologies, and how to get them integrated.
Speaker 2:
So I think there's several parts to that, you know. The first is simply discovering and becoming aware of new technologies. Right, as we continue up and out this exponential growth curve, things are accelerating and that makes it increasingly challenging for any company to maintain awareness and discovery of new capabilities, new tech that's coming into the market. Sort of alongside that is understanding that new technology and the implications of it. And that's where I really start seeing a breakdown happen, right, companies not set up for discovering new tech. Maybe they rely on the tried and true vendors they've worked with for years or decades and they're just not being exposed to and learning about new technologies. And even when they come across something new, they don't really understand it, they don't understand the implications of it and what it can do.
Speaker 2:
And I guess the last part of that I'd add on to is I see a lot of companies that are failing to innovate with any kind of strategy. You know, certainly in the retail industry, retailers have long been guilty of sort of being followers, be it fast follower or slow follower, but typically implementing the same or similar solutions capabilities as they see their competitors doing. I think, increasingly, the world is making really nearly anything possible today and I think that creates a massive opportunity for companies to really create their own future of what they think their business, of what they think future retail looks like, and innovate in that direction.
Speaker 1:
Okay, how can brands approach adding new technology to their existing MarTech stacks and what can they do to ensure the integration is up to their expectations? Integration is up to their expectations.
Speaker 2:
So great question, and again a couple parts to that. I think the first thing is data. Right, data lies at the heart of a lot of integration issues. No-transcript. Every company's got a merchandising department or a marketing department, hr, so on and so forth. Each of those have become siloed with their own applications and many times their own data. Each of those have become siloed with their own applications and many times their own data, and over time, you know, marketing might need a piece of data that merchandising's got, so they call IT up to create a point-to-point integration.
Speaker 2:
And then something else happens. Operations need something somebody else has. There's another point-to-point. What happens over time is growing complexity, and I use the term. You know it's sort of blunt, but you know the result is really a giant hairball of technologies, operating systems, databases, point to point integrations. What's happening is companies like Amazon, walmart and some other big guys are rapidly evolving to a digital operating model that is built on a unified data foundation. So they're bringing all their data together, making it available to any part of the organization through APIs and standard interfaces. That makes it much easier to deploy new AI applications and capabilities.
Speaker 1:
As we talked about a little bit earlier, getting organizational buy-in is integral to the success of these efforts, but it's more and more challenging for a number of different reasons. How should brands look at securing organizational buy-in initially and keeping it strong going forward?
Speaker 2:
So what we suggest is there's several parts to that. The first is, depending upon the company structure is actually doing a session with the board of directors to make sure the board understands the world that the business is operating in today in terms of this exponential world, what that means, the implications of that. So the CEO and the C-suite have the board supporting them in what they must do and change. The next is obviously getting the entire executive team on board, understanding this new world they're in and then from that begin to identify processes and practices that ultimately limit innovation right. Every company, to one degree or another, suffers from the you know, we've always done it this way type of philosophy or thinking, and more and more I'm seeing that thinking holding back companies from getting the full benefit of new technologies and innovation. So it's beginning to identify those practices and processes and then setting them aside and being able to start with a clean sheet of paper.
Speaker 1:
Excellent. You discussed the butterfly effect in binding retail as well, and how retail and how new and innovative technologies have flooded the retail industry. We talk about generative AI, chat, gp. You know communities that can cause disruption, but it can also create some kind of dissonance as well. You know how can companies position themselves to adapt to this unpredictable system.
Speaker 2:
So I think one of the biggest things is to develop and put in place what I think of as sort of an early warning system, right through wide and varied reading, certainly watching what competitors are doing, but it's really trying to maintain awareness out there across different areas, some that may not directly today impact on your business but eventually, because of what technology is doing, will come to have a path there. I'll give you a quick example. Years ago I began reading about a couple of retailers over in Asia who had developed frequent shopper programs. The idea of giving a shopper a barcoded card they could use it would trigger a digital coupon. It was that idea that got me thinking about frequent shopper programs but really led to launching our initial loyalty effort, that that card that targeted electronic discounts could be a shopper ID. And you know, we all know, where that world has gone.
Speaker 1:
Okay, what are some of the top takeaways your readers will have when they finish reading Buy and Agree Tail? What are some of the top takeaways?
Speaker 2:
your readers will have when they finish reading Bionic Retail. So I think, first and foremost, an understanding of what true exponential growth is and the implications of exponential growth of technology. Everybody knows the word, but very, very few people truly understand what exponential growth is and what it means. The second takeaway is really having a path to the future built around technology-first thinking, developing an innovation doctrine and so on. A third takeaway would be the role of inspiration in creating a future. Creating a future. And then I think one of the key takeaways here is an understanding for the need to make a deliberate decision. To make the leap to the exponential path to the future, or to deliberately decide we're going to remain on the path to purgatory, makes sense.
Speaker 1:
When you look at the opportunities for retail brands today, what do you think their biggest challenge they have with regarding brand loyalty?
Speaker 2:
brand affinity, maybe, so I think it ultimately comes down to knowing the customer and then keeping pace with the customer as technology accelerates, and remaining relevant to that shopper both in terms of content and certainly in time and in place. There is so much data that's available out there today to understand the individual shopper, and there are some exciting things coming along, like augmented reality and the next generation of smart glasses that are just going to transform the shopping experience in brick and mortar stores and lend themselves to an incredible degree of personalization.
Speaker 1:
Excellent. And lastly, can you name a brand or two that you are loyal to, and why?
Speaker 2:
So I like Apple, I'm a big Apple fan and really because of the connectivity and the ecosystem they've created across different devices you know I can go from my notebook to my iPad to my phone everything works and everything's available to me. One other quick one I'd mention would be American Airlines. You know they have, over the last couple decades, taken very good care of me and they seem to understand that it's a mix of benefits. It's not just frequent flyer miles right, it's financial benefits but it's service and recognition become increasingly important as you live your life on airplanes increasingly important as you live your life on airplanes Absolutely Well.
Speaker 1:
Thank you very much for that Very insightful. I'm sure those who listen and watch will find it very insightful as well. But now we have our quickfire question segment, so we like to limit these to one word or short phrases and we'll go ahead and kick it off with what is your favorite word. And we'll go ahead and kick it off with what is your favorite word. Heather my wife's name.
Speaker 2:
Okay, what is your least favorite word? Can't, as in I can't or we can't.
Speaker 1:
What excites you?
Speaker 2:
The future. What do you find? Tiresome Organizations that can't or won't change.
Speaker 1:
Okay, other than your own book, what other book would you recommend to a colleague?
Speaker 2:
Actually my son's book named Hunting Discomfort.
Speaker 1:
Okay, excellent. What profession, other than the one you currently have, would you like to attempt?
Speaker 2:
So this is a good one. I had to think about this Explorer. I love discovering new things and new ideas. Okay.
Speaker 1:
And what do you enjoy doing that you don't oftentimes have time to?
Speaker 2:
do Traveling with my wife and many times our Bernice Mountain Dog. Okay who inspired you to become the person you are today. Again two people Certainly my wife Heather, but also my good friend Brian Wolf, who was instrumental in helping me chart the course my career has taken.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and how would you like to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:
So as a loving, supportive father, first and foremost, and as a loyal friend.
Speaker 1:
Okay, well, gary, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great getting your perspective, especially on the book Bionic Retail. It definitely should be germane and relevant to our audience, and it was also great getting to know you a little bit as well. So thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. Thanks everyone for taking the time to listen today. Make sure you join us back for another edition of our leaders and customer loyalty or our authors academic series soon. Until then, have a wonderful day.
