Total Retail Survey 2016

Online shoppers around the world are fundamentally disrupting retail - again. Will your organization be left behind?

In PwC’s most comprehensive Total Retail survey to date, we asked nearly 23,000 online shoppers around the world about issues ranging from mobile shopping to social media influence to innovation at retailers.

Their answers reveal the changing behaviors that will drive the next retail revolution.

It’s nothing short of a revolution, and the stakes have never been higher for retailers and consumer goods companies.

Our Total Retail survey results, together with 2015 fourth-quarter retail results around the world, point to 2016 as a watershed for many of the trends that have been percolating over the past few years.

From the unmistakable desire to be a member of a specialized retail community to buying more on their mobile phones, from becoming more reliant on social media to demanding a more service-focused and knowledgeable store employee, global consumers are pushing the boundaries of what shopping means.

PwC's Global Retail and Consumer practice, in conjunction with PwC's Research to Insight (r2i), administered a global survey to understand and compare consumer shopping behaviors and the use of different retail channels across 25 territories: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China/Hong Kong, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In this report, we present and discuss the findings of our global Total Retail survey - together with additional PwC analysis and third-party research - to uncover eight insights of the next retail revolution.