SCORE - Anwendung strategischer Voraussicht im Einzelhandelssektor

The retail sector has always been characterized by a high degree of change – either in terms of customer requirements, market conditions, legal constraints or in terms of global mega trends like individualization, servitization, digitalization or urbanization. Especially during the last two decades, the speed of this change has accelerated, leading to e.g. the growing power of online market players or the rise of big platforms controlling whole retail ecosystems. The retail sector has to be prepared for impending transformations and the ability to identify, analyse and contextually react to these changes will be an essential one in the future. However, most retail practitioners seem to rather react to changes than to proact and prepare for them. In addition, scientific literature does not provide practicable, implementable and evaluated uncertainty reduction approaches for the retail sector. The current poster addresses this area of tension between practical relevance and research gap. From a theoretical perspective, the paper builds on the approach of Corporate Foresight (CF). More precisely, the theoretical framework applied and adapted in this poster is the "Successful Foresight Process" by Horton (Horton 1999). In the form of the SCORE methodology, a CF-based methodology for strategic uncertainty reduction in retail is presented. The specific elements are: I) The SCORE community as a network of company partners and academia to collect inputs, discuss trends and prepare outputs for further steps; II) the SCORE Trendwatch as a software platform to ensure a virtual space for presenting, sharing and discussing insights and trends; III) the SCORE trend-radars as continuously updated tools to visualize and communicate specific trends and general, global retail trends based on the PESTEL dimensions; IV) the SCORE meetings as quarterly, physical workshops with selected focus topics and the possibility to share, discuss and analyse inputs to defined trends in a cross-industry setting and V) the SCORE trend-profiles as the refined, interpreted and detailed description of the trends discussed and evaluated in the SCORE meetings, developed and provided individually for each and every partner organisation. Building on its implementation in the course of a large-scale Austrian research project (logistikum.RETAIL), first experiences and key learning of implementing SCORE in organisational practice are also presented in the poster. So far, the SCORE methodology performs well, first trend radars have been visualized, several specific SCORE meetings have been conducted and a set of specific trend profiles has been generated and provided to the SCORE partner organisations.