Global E-Tailing 2025 Study

How we will be living and shopping in the year 2025: four possible developments.
By means of four future scenarios, the “Global E-Tailing 2025” study describes the role which electronic retailing will play in people’s lives in the year 2025, how international online retailing will change consumer behavior and thus the world of retailing as a whole, and what challenges the logistics industry will then be faced with.

The four exploratory future scenarios have been developed on the basis of a global, medium-term perspective; they are not intended to be precise forecasts of the future.

Rather, with the description of these future scenarios for the year 2025 the study aims to initiate a dialog about the future of electronic retailing and the implications for the logistics industry.

This look ahead to the future is enhanced by several essays written by well-known experts in the fields of research and practice and also by interviews with managers in the logistics and retail sectors.

The primary focus here is on trends and developments which are already highly significant and which will have a growing influence on consumerism, retailing and logistics in the course of the next eleven years.

The study also examines a number of future-oriented best-practice solutions already implemented by Deutsche Post DHL in order to demonstrate the development capabilities which increased electronic retailing offers for the logistics industry.

The scenarios
The scenario method is an ideal means of developing alternative visions of the future. The objective is to spur people’s imagination and give them new perspectives.

Accordingly, the scenarios do not simply carry the current situation forward into the future: they consciously reckon with upheavals and discontinuities. With this description of very diverse development paths, the future scenarios generate an awareness of possible changes in the business environment.

They invite the reader to consider the risks and opportunities involved, as well as the strategies and possible courses of action.

The result is a valuable mental exercise and a thought-provoking assessment of possible future developments.