CornerShop, the retail store of tomorrow

The world of retailing is facing fundamental transformation: increasingly digital, consumers expect their purchases to be enabled by seamless tech and underpinned by people and planet friendly principles. To help our retail clients thrive in this evolving context, we have put our experience and capabilities together to design and launch a new hybrid retail experience and innovation concept store: CornerShop.

Inspired by the traditional British corner shop, this new approach will support retailers and brands as they understand how digital innovation can enable new ways to evolve the customer experience, improve in-store operations and enable consumers to rediscover the joy of in-person retail, through exciting new options to engage and shop.

CornerShop is split into four corners, each exploring fundamental aspects of the shopping experience: the automated store, the augmented store, the purposeful store and the personalised store. Combining real-life products, the latest technologies and personalised experiences, everything on display in CornerShop has been curated based on insights gathered from deep global research and data analysis, as well as Capgemini’s real-world expertise from addressing the challenges faced by clients and their customers every day. CornerShop will continue to evolve and introduce more innovative technology concepts to suit the evolving needs of retailers and brands.

CornerShop not only enables retailers and brands to ideate and test tomorrow’s shopping innovations, but also supports our clients to gain that all-important consumer feedback—from real customers in the heart of London.

Accelerating positive innovation

Challenge

Striving for change. The increasing acceleration of technology and consumer’s demand for more from their instore experiences is forcing retailers and brands to strive for increasingly innovative ways to engage with their customers. We wanted to find a way to help our clients take risks.

Solution

Taking risks. In a retail context, taking risks means rapid test and learn cycles, as well as identifying strong signals to give the confidence to move new ideas and technologies faster through the innovation funnel. CornerShop is a pop-up retail space solution that enables us to play safely with risk.

Outcome

Open for business since we first opened our doors, we’ve helped clients understand consumer needs by testing and learning across multiple live pop-ups, imagining and building and testing unique experiences—ranging from true frictionless shopping to connected packaging and clothing.

What are we testing in CornerShop?

Over the course of numerous live pop-ups, we have tested and iterated over 30 new experiences and technologies. Here are five of the best concepts that we believe signal tomorrow’s shopping:

1. AI-enabled store staff solution
   Our world-first point of view enhances the in-store headset with a generative assistant. Aiding store managers and shop floor staff as they assist customers, troubleshoot issues and complete tasks, the headset upends traditional training models by providing on-demand support.
2. Functional AR
   Our AR point of view helps consumers navigate the complexity of shopping with purpose. In a test that proved incredibly popular with consumers, AR was overlaid onto shelving in which products are compatible with their specific shopping goals.
3. Sustainability via Dynamic Pricing
   Following our belief that technology can help minimise food waste, we ran an experiment using AI-based pricing that calculated the peak pricing for perishable products and tied this into real-time screen media to promote to customers.
4. Next-gen conversational commerce
   We have developed and tested a personalized and convenient solution that leverages GenAI to provide customers with meal inspiration, based on real-time availability of stock in-store, and populates their reserve and collect baskets accordingly.
5. Generative targeted in-store media
   We’re developing real-time, contextualized marketing that can be delivered at optimized moments to relevant audiences on in-store media. Leveraging GenAI to overcome complex business rules and workflows, it enables next-gen personalized experiences.

Meeting the evolving needs of retailers and brands

Over multiple pop-ups, CornerShop has welcomed thousands of consumers and has helped hundreds of organizations reshape the future of their retail through cutting-edge ideation workshops.

CornerShop has been widely featured in press, including Forbes, ITN and BBC. The experiences we’ve created have spanned across the fashion, grocery, convenience and beauty sectors. We have inspired, educated and guided some of the world’s greatest brands both in person and virtually.

Going forward, CornerShop will continue to evolve and introduce more innovative technology concepts to suit the evolving needs of retailers and brands. Ultimately, we’re driven by sharing the learnings gleaned through CornerShop with our clients to help them on their own innovation journeys.

Get in touch today to learn how we can help you deliver the future of retail.