Retailing in year 2019 A Delphi study

Information technology development has in recent decades had a major impact on retailing. Discount supermarket chains began to offer customers the possibility to shop without the requirement to do this over the counter, instead the customer could help themselves buying the products they wanted. Retailing today has an even greater focus on the self service in the supermarkets, recently many retailing chains has introduced self-checkout systems to increase the profits and reduce staffing requirements. In the 1960’s the start for today's ecommerce was founded, however the development took off 30 years later in the beginning of 1990. During the first years of 2000 the consumption on the Internet increased rapidly. When looking back on the swiftly changes in the retailing business it’s hard to not think on how future development might look and what’s influencing it. The purpose of this candidate thesis was to examine a future development of retailing with focus on the usage of information technology. The time horizon in this future study was five to ten years ahead. The methodology used in this thesis was based on Delphi. The selection of methodology was motivated because of the many advantages when performing prospective studies. Interviews can be conducted by phone, e-mail and meetings, which is an advantage when the study participants are located in different parts of the country. The participants have been answering questions about influencing trends and factors within retailing business and their thoughts and opinions where compiled to predict how a future development could look. Results of the study are a compilation of expert opinions that representing the most influencing trends and factors for the retailing business usage of information technology in the next five to ten years