Future Retail Disruption: The drivers of change shaping the future of retail

Staying ahead in retail requires an understanding of what will drive change in the future in order to adequately prepare. That’s why Flywheel’s Retail Insights team produces an annual Future Retail Disruption report, which dives deep into the forces set to transform the commerce landscape.

To help you build for the future and not just keep up, the report spotlights the global seismic shifts, blind spots, and strategic bets that will define the next era of commerce while providing specific scenarios to prepare for. The full report is available for Retail Insights subscribers, but here’s a taste of what you’ll find inside.

How to identify disruption and opportunity

To make sense of all the places that disruption and opportunity can come from, we leverage the STEIP framework—breaking down change into five core areas:

• Society: How shifting consumer preferences and lifestyles are reshaping demand

• Technology: Which new tools and platforms are redefining engagement, fulfillment, and media

• Economy: How spending power, inflation, and value perceptions influence the market

• Industry: The retail models, channels, and partnerships that will drive growth.

• Policy: How privacy, regulation, and compliance are rewriting the rules

This holistic lens ensures we’re not just tracking “what’s trending,” but uncovering the interconnected factors behind retail’s biggest long-term changes.

What’s driving retail disruption right now? [A sneak peek]

After evaluating hundreds of factors, here’s a look at a few of the 32 drivers of change we’ve highlighted for 2025:

•Society: Purchasing dynamics will be further influenced by social networks and trusted advocates, while age, family structure, and cultural preferences will change how we shop and what we buy

•Technology: AI moves from test and trial to implementation, while data-driven personalization transforms the media landscape and shapes the customer experience

•Economy: Economic uncertainty means brands need to provide value and affordability to meet short-term consumer needs, even as we are on the verge of long-term demographic shifts that will change who our most valuable shoppers are  

•Industry: Value-oriented formats lead growth in the physical store world, while emerging digital channels like social commerce create new sources of growth and demand new ecommerce capabilities

•Policy: Geopolitical tensions and protectionism will shape global supply chains, while digital proliferation also leads to more data privacy requirements

Assumptions shaping the future

Beyond identifying the drivers that will change the future, the most important outcome is helping brands understand the scenarios that they should be planning for.  Here are a few key assumptions that your business should be considering:

Shoppers

• Social platforms dominate brand discovery, shaping shopping experiences

• AI drives hyper-personalization, engaging precisely targeted audiences

• Affordability a priority as spend preferences shift for many out of necessity

Retailers

• A unified and connected shopper experience, blending online with offline, drives spend and loyalty

• Media networks optimize advertising and personalization strategies to secure brand investments

• Ecosystem models drive deeper and more personalized engagement, boosting revenues to fuel investment

Brands

• Convergence of retail and media into commerce driving need to reimagine organizational design and JBPs

• Data clean rooms and audience targeting drive enhanced insights, activations and measurements

• The power and efficiency of AI is embraced across the value chain, shaping product and shopper strategies

Get the full picture

The full Future Retail Disruption report unpacks these dynamics with thorough analyses, best practice examples, and tactical recommendations, helping your business execute a more thorough planning process.

Don’t just keep up with retail disruption. Get ahead of it. Subscribe to Retail Insights for the complete report and a first look at what’s next.  

Want to walk through the key areas of the report live? Join us for our webinar on June 18^th at 10AM EST. Register here.

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