FUTURE STORES

David Merrefield

Presentations at last week's CIES Executive Congress in Madrid, Spain, offered a spectrum of ideas about how supermarkets of the future will evolve -- assuming supermarkets survive in their current form at all. CIES is the international association that draws membership from food-based companies from the retail, wholesale and supply sides of the businesses in more than 40 countries. CIES is based in Paris, with additional offices in Washington and Tokyo. You'll find news coverage of the CIES meeting on Pages 1 and 6 of this issue of SN. Concerning future stores, one amusing glimpse, premised on a projected outcome of the industry's efficiency quest, was offered by Brian Baldock, deputy chairman of Guinness in the United Kingdom. He tells me he originated this metaphor, which is based on a critique that suggests how an orchestra might more efficiently render Beethoven's Fifth:

· For considerable periods in the piece, the four oboe players have nothing to do. The number of players should be reduced and their work spread over the whole orchestra, thus eliminating peaks of inactivity.

· All 12 violins are playing identical notes. This seems unnecessary duplication and the staff of this section should be drastically cut. If a large volume of sound is really required, this could be obtained through an electronic amplifier. · No useful purpose is served by repeating with horns the passage that has already been handled by the strings. If such redundant passages were eliminated, the concert could be reduced from two hours to 20 minutes. By the way, I've shortened his story a little for the sake of publishing efficiency.

Challenging thoughts about the future came from other directions, too, such as a broad view from Stanley M. Davis, a consultant and former Harvard Business School professor.

He propounded the notion that the world is now passing from being based on technology-driven activities to an era of knowledge. That means future products will be self-refining: "The more you use the product, the smarter it gets and the smarter the user gets. That's the characteristic of a knowledge-based system." The change implied is so great that business should now be looking outside its own organization to figure out how to move into entirely new endeavors, he said.

Moving into entirely new activities was also one of the implications of a presentation made by two Andersen Consulting USA executives, Glen Terbeek and Fred Schneider. Speaking on "virtual retailing," they predicted that in 10 years or so, the information superhighway will bring to households an interactive shopping and information system. In this scenario, goods and information could be delivered to the home without the intervention of anything like a conventional store at all. But stores might survive in such a world if they become places where ideas on unfamiliar products and their uses were theatrically shown. Given that 64% of current-day shoppers say they "hate to shop," the challenge of inventing the "fun store" of the future is a great one.