Perspectives on Retail and Consumer Goods

Perspectives on retail and consumer goods Number 7, January 2019 Perspectives on retail and Editor McKinsey Practice consumer goods is written Monica Toriello Publications by experts and practitioners in McKinsey & Company’s Contributing Editors Editor in Chief Retail and Consumer Goods Susan Gurewitsch, Christian Lucia Rahilly practices, along with other Johnson, Barr Seitz McKinsey colleagues. Executive Editors Art Direction and Design Michael T. Borruso, To send comments or Leff Communications Allan Gold, Bill Javetski, request copies, email us: Mark Staples Consumer_Perspectives Data Visualization @McKinsey.com Richard Johnson, Copyright © 2019 McKinsey & Jonathon Rivait Company. All rights reserved. Editorial Board Peter Breuer, Tracy Francis, Editorial Production This publication is not Jan Henrich, Greg Kelly, Sajal Elizabeth Brown, Roger intended to be used as Kohli, Jörn Küpper, Clarisse Draper, Gwyn Herbein, the basis for trading in the Magnin, Paul McInerney, Pamela Norton, Katya shares of any company or Tobias Wachinger Petriwsky, Charmaine Rice, for undertaking any other John C. Sanchez, Dana complex or significant Senior Content Directors Sand, Katie Turner, Sneha financial transaction without Greg Kelly, Tobias Wachinger Vats, Pooja Yadav, Belinda Yu consulting appropriate professional advisers. Project and Content Managing Editors Managers Heather Byer, Venetia No part of this publication Verena Dellago, Shruti Lal Simcock may be copied or redistributed in any form Cover Photography without the prior written © Rawpixel/Getty Images consent of McKinsey & Company. Table of contents 2 Foreword by Greg Kelly 4 12 22 26 Winning in an era of A new value-creation Agility@Scale: Capturing ‘Fast action’ in fast food: unprecedented disruption: model for consumer goods growth in the US consumer- McDonald’s CFO on why the A perspective on US retail The industry’s historical goods sector company is growing again In light of the large-scale value-creation model To compete more effectively Kevin Ozan became CFO of forces disrupting the US retail is faltering. Here’s how to in the US market, consumer- McDonald’s in 2015. Since industry, once-optional moves reinvent it. packaged-goods companies then, the restaurant chain have become imperatives. must combine greater has had a string of successes. agility with new types of Here’s his take on what’s scale advantage. working, what’s not, and what’s next for the iconic brand. 34 48 54 64 Reviving grocery retail: Who’s shopping where? From lab to leader: How Faster fashion: How to Six imperatives The power of geospatial consumer companies can shorten the apparel calendar In the United States and analytics in omnichannel retail drive growth at scale with To get new styles into Western Europe, many Using advanced geospatial disruptive innovation stores more quickly, fashion traditional grocery retailers analytics, retailers can now In the era of “fast products” companies must improve are seeing their sales and quantify the true economic and digital disruption, internal collaboration, tap into margins fall—and things value of each of their stores delivering growth requires consumer insights, and start could get even worse. Here’s across channels—and they’re putting in place new to digitize the value chain. how to reverse the trend. uncovering surprising insights. predictive consumer-growth capabilities—including innovation—based on speed, agility, and scale. 70 76 QUICK TAKES 46 Global consumer sentiment: Still on an upward trend 47 Commercial excellence in China 62 2019: A year of awakening for the Delivering the goods, on Beyond procurement: fashion industry time and in full Transforming indirect 86 Are your fruits and vegetables E-commerce giants spending in retail top-notch? have raised the bar for If retailers treat indirect costs supply-chain performance. as an opportunity for business Now consumer-goods transformation rather than just manufacturers face a a procurement matter, they stark choice: achieve new can boost return on sales by 88 Contributors levels of accuracy and as much as 2 percent. 90 Regional leaders responsiveness, or pay a heavy price. 1 Foreword A new year is an opportunity for renewal—a fresh start, a time to recommit to long-standing goals or to pursue new ones, a chance to get reenergized and build momentum for the year ahead. Indeed, most of my recent conversations with leaders in the retail and consumer-goods industries have been about bold plans to tackle the challenges and make the most of the opportunities that this year will bring. As you embark on your 2019 journey, my colleagues and I offer some of our latest thinking on topics that affect retailers and consumer-goods manufacturers worldwide. We find this to be a time like no other, as large-scale trends and disruptions fundamentally and systematically reshape the consumer sector. The articles in this edition of Perspectives on retail and consumer goods explore how these trends and disruptions are changing our industries, and how successful companies are responding to—and capitalizing on—these changes. We hope that our research and analyses will help you gain new insights, find inspired solutions, and learn from the experiences of others. Some recurring themes emerge in many of these articles. One is the potential of digitization and advanced analytics to transform every part of the business. Another is the rising importance of agility in organizations—the ability to act rapidly on customer feedback, bring solutions to 2 Perspectives on retail and consumer goods Number 7, January 2019 market quickly, and refine them continuously. Yet another is the crucial role that talent plays in a company’s success, in a world where certain skills and capabilities are in extremely high demand but short supply. Companies neglect these themes at their peril. In every subsector within retail and consumer goods, we’ve found that the winners are those companies that harness the power of digitization and analytics, implement agile methodologies, and put talent at the top of the CEO agenda. We believe that laggards in these areas might get by in the short term but will be vulnerable in the medium term—and ultimately will struggle to survive. This edition of Perspectives also features an interview with Kevin Ozan, the CFO of McDonald’s. As part of the top team at one of the world’s largest restaurant chains, he has firsthand knowledge of what it takes to turn around a company in decline and steer it toward sustained, profitable growth. McDonald’s has been one of the most fascinating growth stories in the retail and food-service industry in the past few years. I hope you find the interview both interesting and instructive. On behalf of my colleagues at McKinsey, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2019. Greg Kelly Senior partner, Atlanta This edition of Perspectives on retail and consumer goods is available for download on McKinsey.com. Most of the articles are also available on the McKinsey Insights app. We welcome your thoughts and reactions; email us at [email protected]. Copyright © 2019 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. Foreword 3 Winning in an era of unprecedented disruption: A perspective on US retail In light of the large-scale forces disrupting the US retail industry, once-optional moves have become imperatives. Jess Huang, Sajal Kohli, and Shruti Lal 4 Perspectives on retail and consumer goods Number 7, January 2019 Much has been made lately of the “retail apocalypse,” other large-scale risks and uncertainties—new with headline after headline declaring the demise trade tariffs and cyberthreats, to name just two—are of retail as we know it. Yes, store closures have indeed keeping many a retail CEO up at night. outpaced store openings across the US market in recent years. And, yes, retail foot traffic in both mall If there was ever a time to challenge assumptions stores and stand-alone stores has been, and continues and take bold action, it is now. In the face of this to be, on a downward trajectory. It’s also true that disruption, formerly optional moves have become the retail landscape is littered with bankruptcies— “must dos.” Retailers that sit on the fence risk getting upward of 40 in the past two and a half years in North outcompeted by aggressive, fast-moving, forward- America alone, with more looming on the horizon. thinking competitors. Yet, at the same time, Amazon and other digital In this article, we discuss five disruptions and five disruptors had a massive run-up in share in a slew of imperatives for competing in the retail environment retail categories. Brands are getting into the retail of the future. While a few retailers may be ahead of game themselves and going directly to the consumer. the game in one or more of the imperatives, none are The pace of M&A and private-equity activity in the yet excelling in all of them. sector has quickened in recent months. Perhaps most telling of all, US retail sales have actually risen: the A disruption like no other: Key questions to 2017 total of $3.53 trillion is a 3.9 percent increase ask now from 2016. Although many of the trends we discuss have been evident for several years, the certainty, combination, © GS Visuals/Getty Images GS © So, is traditional retail dead? Or is it undergoing and acceleration of these forces have resulted in a a metamorphosis—and more alive than ever? disruption unlike any that retailers have faced before. This is the new normal. In our view, the answer is clear: the US retail industry, far from being moribund, is experiencing disruption— Are you meeting consumers where they are— and reinvention—at unprecedented speed. It’s not both physically and digitally? a story about the malaise of an entire sector but rather Gone are the days when a retailer could rely on brand a tale of two worlds.

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