A Pragmatic Review of Grocery Shopping Trends with Accenture's Karen Fang Grant | FMI 2025
🎙 Omni Talk Retail Live from FMI 2025 🎙
Join Chris Walton & Anne Mezzenga as they sit down with Karen Fang Grant, Managing Director at Accenture, live from the Simbe Podcast Studio at FMI 2025, to discuss how AI, robotics, and automation are transforming grocery retail. From shifting consumer demographics to new strategies for omnichannel success, this conversation is packed with insights.
⏳ Key Moments:
00:00 - Welcome & Introduction: Live from FMI 2025 with Accenture
02:00 - Consumer Behavior Shifts: The rise of Gen Alpha & aging populations
05:30 - AI & Personalization: How technology is bridging the retail gap
08:15 - Robotics in Grocery: Automation, smart stores, and store efficiency
12:40 - Omnichannel Strategy: What it really means for grocery retail
15:20 - Future Predictions: How grocery shopping will evolve in 5-10 years
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#fmi #retailtrends #retailstrategy #accenture #grocery
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is Omnitok Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker B:And I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker A:And we're coming to you live from FMI down in Market Island.
Speaker A:And today, Chris and I have the pleasure of being hosted by Simbi.
Speaker A:We are here in the simbi Booth, number 108.
Speaker A:We'll still be here for a little while this afternoon, so definitely stop on by and say hello.
Speaker A:You might get the opportunity to meet another wonderful guest of ours, including who we have standing between us right now.
Speaker A:Karen Feng Grant, the managing director at Accenture.
Speaker A:Karen, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Happy to be here.
Speaker A:We just had one of your colleagues on yesterday.
Speaker A:We have learned so much from the team at Accenture at this conference.
Speaker A:So we're really excited to have you and to get to know you a little bit today.
Speaker C:Excellent.
Speaker B:Yeah, and it's getting really boisterous in here.
Speaker B:Right as we started up, we got some.
Speaker A:It's because Karen's in the house.
Speaker B:Some boisterous action happening here at the conference.
Speaker B:The conference is starting to heat up.
Speaker B:All right, Karen, let's start with this, like we always do.
Speaker B:Like, tell us about your background and your role.
Speaker C:All right, so currently I am a managing director at Accenture.
Speaker C:I lead research across all of our industries that we serve.
Speaker C:That does not mean I am an expert in all of them.
Speaker C:Most of my work actually happens within retail and consumer goods.
Speaker C:But I do have purview over everything.
Speaker C:As we know, the consumer is participating in multiple industries.
Speaker C:So it's good to know about all of them.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And how many years at Accenture?
Speaker C:This is an awkward question.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker C:No, it's not.
Speaker A:Pre approved, Chris.
Speaker B:I didn't even think about that.
Speaker C:Yeah, I've been with Accenture my entire career.
Speaker B:Oh, you have?
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:That's why.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:You don't have to date it.
Speaker C: Since: Speaker A: Well, since: Speaker A:I'm curious, you know, as you kind of consider where we are, what we're going to see in the next couple of years, especially towards the end of this conference, what are you thinking Are going to be some of the most disruptive or biggest changes that we'll see in the industry?
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:I think.
Speaker C:I think some of the changes come from changes in the consumer who always stays the same and is always different.
Speaker C:Some of those changes come from technology, of course, and what it enables us to do.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:If you want to start with the consumer, which we always should do in this particular industry, well done.
Speaker C:I think that there are three aspects to it.
Speaker C:So one is who that consumer is, one is what that consumer wants, and then one is how that consumer buys.
Speaker C:If you think about who that consumer is, there are just these large macro, big changes that are happening.
Speaker C:I think about it as the tale of two cities.
Speaker C:We are getting older and we are getting younger.
Speaker C:We are getting richer and we're getting poorer.
Speaker C:We're getting healthier and we're getting, unfortunately, less healthy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:So let me put a little color into that.
Speaker C:We are getting older and younger.
Speaker C: by: Speaker C:But we tend to forget to talk about that younger consumer.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:So gen Alpha.
Speaker C:I actually have a gen Alpha.
Speaker B:As do we.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:This is going to be the largest generation in history.
Speaker C:Two billion consumers around the world and a notable consumer, even though they are still very young, because this is a consumer who behaves and learns differently.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's a consumer who has never known life without the iPhone.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:If you have kids that age, you know, when they.
Speaker C:You had your TV on and they were trying to swipe it and they're saying, mom and dad, why doesn't my TV have a touch screen?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Never known life without the iPhone.
Speaker C:Never known life without social media.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker C:So a different consumer that is changing how we need to engage with them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:Richer and poorer.
Speaker C:Of course, you know, obviously median income is rising across the globe.
Speaker C:But then, of course, we've also lived through these periods of consumer price inflation.
Speaker C:Saw a great presentation from Numerator this morning that showed the divide anyway.
Speaker C:Richer and poorer, and then healthier and less healthy again.
Speaker C:You know, life expectancy over the past several decades, really heartening, really encouraging.
Speaker C:The rise has been very consistent.
Speaker C:But of course, then we have also the rise of factors like obesity and 890 million people around the world who are classified as obese.
Speaker C:It's a problem.
Speaker C:So that's what's happening with the consumer and how the consumer is changing.
Speaker C:It is also changing what we want then as a result.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:So if you think about, you know, just picking on that health factor that I was talking about.
Speaker C:We all want health.
Speaker C:We've always wanted health.
Speaker C:This has only accelerated with those factors I was talking about, plus Covid, plus everything else that we're facing.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And that is actually leading to changes then for companies and who companies are.
Speaker C:We're no longer allowed to be just one thing.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:When a consumer is asking for health, they aren't asking for just all of those different piece parts of health.
Speaker C:They are asking for the full end to end solutions.
Speaker C:So we see companies in cbg, for example, who are becoming more and more like pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker C:We do this patents analysis.
Speaker C:I'm a researcher, so of course I geek out about these things.
Speaker A:Yeah, great.
Speaker B:Patent analysis.
Speaker C:So we look at the, in this particular analysis, the patents that, that the top 20 food and beverage companies around the world filed over the past five years.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And what you see is one of the huge growing trends in terms of the topics that they are patenting is healthcare.
Speaker C:And this is not healthy product.
Speaker C:This is not gluten free.
Speaker C:This is not locale.
Speaker C:This is not even alternative sweeteners.
Speaker C:It is food and beverage as a therapeutic, food as medicine, functional condition.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker C:And so you see, it's like drugs for immunological disorders, drugs for neurological performance and food in its role in that.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Wow, that's wild.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Go ahead, Angie, have a question.
Speaker A:I would go for it.
Speaker A:I'm just like in awe, thinking about.
Speaker B:I was going to go into that, so I was going to say I was going to ask you.
Speaker B:So how, how do you, in your role, you know, stay up on all this?
Speaker B:Like how do you, how do you design your research around these trends?
Speaker B:Like how.
Speaker B:Talk to us about that.
Speaker A:She reads patents, Chris.
Speaker A:She researches.
Speaker B:She exhaustively looks at legal files.
Speaker C:No, it starts with INC curiosity.
Speaker C:But then fortunately have this great team of, you know, data scientists and psychologists and other forms of researchers who are continually examining us.
Speaker C:We have a whole research program.
Speaker B:How do you decide where to go though?
Speaker B:Like, how do you decide, like, oh yeah, we're gonna go look at this one area versus X.
Speaker B:Because you only have so many resources too, right?
Speaker B:Like, how do you decide?
Speaker C:I mean, a lot of it comes from the industry itself.
Speaker C:So I'm talking to the industry all the time, talking to retailers and CPG companies and they have all of these really smart people, right.
Speaker C:And who are engaging and trying to understand the consumer all the time.
Speaker C:That leads to a series of really great questions.
Speaker C:And then because I am sort of contrarian, I think of my own and my own challenges to that.
Speaker C:And then that leads to, you know, the power of research, trying to answer all those questions.
Speaker B:We love contrarians and omnitok, Karen.
Speaker B:That's kind of our.
Speaker A:We have one of them.
Speaker A:Yeah, we do maybe two at times.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:Well, Karen, I'm curious.
Speaker A:You know, there's been a lot of conversation around technology, especially in the retail and grocery space.
Speaker A:Here at the show we're hearing about AI tools, robotics, blockchain, all kinds of things.
Speaker A:I'm curious what you feel like are the most important technologies for the retailers and especially grocers here at the show to be looking into and how they kind of balance this innovation investment with just day to day operations of making sure that the store is functioning as it should.
Speaker A:Like how, how do you advise some of the retailers and CPGs that you.
Speaker C:Talk to so much, so much to talk about here?
Speaker C:Yeah, it's.
Speaker C:We're in this interesting point where, you know, once upon a time companies could form their corporate strategies and then they figure out how technology can enable it.
Speaker C:It's a little bit flipping right now where technology is actually.
Speaker B:That's interesting.
Speaker C:Creating those new market opportunities.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:And we have to then shape our strategies around it.
Speaker C:It necessarily, you know, the tail wagging the dog, but, but it is more closely interlinked, interplay between the two.
Speaker C:You mentioned several technologies, all of which are important.
Speaker C:One cannot live, function, succeed without AI.
Speaker C:That is inarguably true.
Speaker C:But I think the advice I would give is that, you know, we need to stop focusing on the technology as the technology.
Speaker C:It's not about the, you know, implementation of a technology, it is starting it.
Speaker C:I mean, this is our industry.
Speaker C:It starts with the shopper, it starts with the consumer.
Speaker C:Understand what they want and then how you can be successful in actually defining what they want.
Speaker C:And what I love about AI is AI is helping us actually bridge that gap between what the consumer wants, which is always changing, always difficult, always challenging, and what we're actually able to manifest well.
Speaker A:And I imagine process the data that you're getting from consumers so that you can start to prioritize and identify what the problems are that you really need to solve most immediately.
Speaker C:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker C:And it goes back to your question of how do you then make decisions and investments around that?
Speaker C:The challenge between the really shiny exciting stuff and then the nuts and bolts of operations which are really important, without which you cannot create that winning consumer experience.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And to me, this is a question of when you ask what is the most important technology?
Speaker C:There is no most important single technology.
Speaker C:All of these technologies actually have to work together and you have to apply them across your enterprise from consumer experience all the way through to what happens on the storefront.
Speaker A:In your research, are there any in particular though that you feel like people should be looking into beyond AI?
Speaker A:Like, is it Any.
Speaker A:Anything that you feel like, this is something that I would at least be diving a little bit deeper into.
Speaker C:I think each plays its different role.
Speaker C:So if you think about AI kind of being the thread throughout everything, it then links into factors like robotics, which, you know, in our industry, you know, the physical nature.
Speaker C:And actually there's this great.
Speaker C:So Wilson Johnson did this great talk at CES about the inter.
Speaker C:You know, how the next stage of AI is physical AI and that brings in the robotics aspect of it.
Speaker C:This is something that we're seeing transforming everything from warehouses to factories to.
Speaker C:And eventually, and we've seen some examples here, the store floor itself.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But then there are other enterprise kinds of technologies.
Speaker C:You know, you can't get away from your ERP systems that actually manage and help you manage all of the processes.
Speaker C:Processes across your organization you can't get away from.
Speaker C:And it shouldn't get away from cloud and the ability to scale up, scale down seamlessly be able to access your information wherever you are.
Speaker C:I mean, that's why I can't pick one.
Speaker A:No, I think that's exactly.
Speaker B:That's really good.
Speaker B:Because what's springing to mind for me, and you know, in a lot of ways we're talking to a consultant.
Speaker B:It kind of is tailor made for like the Venn diagram of like, what you're saying, Right.
Speaker B:Previously you had the consumer and you had your business value proposal position, but now you're saying technology is such an important point that you have to include it in that intersection of those concepts.
Speaker B:And so depending on who you are and what you're looking at, you have to decide which of those technologies you want to go and deploy to accomplish what you want to.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Is that the right way to think about it?
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:With that, business needs still always leads.
Speaker C:Consumer need always leads.
Speaker C:We've made mistakes in the past where we're like, oh, well, this is like a magical technology can accomplish all these things, but we couldn't find that intersection with what a consumer actually wants.
Speaker B:Right, right, exact.
Speaker B:Like, the beacon is always the example.
Speaker B:I hear like, oh, I'll be in the store and you can beacon, you know, know where I am and send me ads on my phone.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Who wants to?
Speaker C:It's like, I don't really want that.
Speaker C:I don't really want that.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:No, I don't want to be annoyed.
Speaker B:All right, so, well, okay, so we've been asking a lot of people this question and I think it's a great, It's a great question.
Speaker B:Coming off the discussion, we just had with you, which is if you were to put your prediction hat on, how will grocery experiences particularly, do you think, change over the next five years to 10 years, if at all?
Speaker B:Like, but what if we step back today and we said, like what?
Speaker B:What's going to be discernibly different five to ten years out from now?
Speaker B:What would you say based on your.
Speaker C:Research, Are you tapping into my optimistic or pessimistic side?
Speaker A:Maybe one from each.
Speaker B:I know which way I lead.
Speaker B:I want the half empty side.
Speaker B:Let's do that.
Speaker C:Well, what's been discouraging for me is that the grocery experience has not changed very much over the past several decades.
Speaker A:We were just talking about that.
Speaker B:That's kind of where my head is.
Speaker B:I don't expect that much change, honestly.
Speaker C:But I'm curious what you think.
Speaker C:I mean, you look at the shopping experience and you think about what consumers have continually asked for and why we shop.
Speaker C:You know, it is not just to procure the products that we want.
Speaker C:We want to discover, we want to be entertained, we want to engage with the community that is in and around stores.
Speaker C:You know, these are all reasons why we shop.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And, and yet if you actually walk into a store, you know, again, other speakers during our time at FMI have about the fact that stores are still organized by category, not necessarily by consumer need.
Speaker C:And that makes it more difficult, you know, easier to merchandise, harder for the consumer to actually find what they want there.
Speaker C:Yes, there are certain events and types of engagements that do happen in stores for some great retailers out there, but by and large it's still somewhat a sterile environment compared to, you know, I live in San Francisco.
Speaker C:If I go to my local farmer's market and I know the farmer and I'm able to talk to him or her about the produce that is there, it's a very different experience.
Speaker C:So I miss that kind of very personal touch.
Speaker C:I always think about the fact that in the world what's old is new and old again.
Speaker C:Once upon a time on our show, if you thought about retail, it was going in, meeting with the shopkeeper.
Speaker C:They knew exactly who you are, they knew your family, they knew what you wanted, they helped you with that.
Speaker C:And there's this move amongst consumers towards wanting more of that.
Speaker C:Now if I move to the optimistic side, then I would say that that intimacy and that ability to know the consumer and the shopper is more possible now.
Speaker C:So again, back to the power of data and AI.
Speaker C:Suddenly you can actually create those kinds of experiences in a seamless and by the way, omnichannel way, because you know more about that individual.
Speaker C:So that's the positive side is we do see some movements in ways that we didn't necessarily expect.
Speaker C:It's not like old school retail, but it is still a little bit of what is old is new.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So let me ask you this as a research.
Speaker B:This is one question I was wanting to ask you.
Speaker B:So, so you said consumers want that, right.
Speaker B:Do they say they want that, but do they really like or do they just say that on a survey, but then when it comes down to it, they just go back to shopping.
Speaker A:They want a faster horse, they want to.
Speaker B:Yeah, they want the prices, they want convenience, they want something near them, you know, they're accustomed to.
Speaker B:You know, you said, you used one thing I was thinking about when you said about how the stores are laid out.
Speaker B:They're kind of laid out that way because that's what consumers know now too.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, changing that would be very cognitively dissonant for a grocery shopper to come in and find their store completely relayed out.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Some type of experiential thing.
Speaker B:So how do you think about that question?
Speaker C:I think about the fact that there is no one store and there cannot be one store nor there can be that one shopping experience.
Speaker C:Experience for what you want.
Speaker C:If you think about the difference between your kind of commodity, you know, very consistent, predictable kind of buys a set it and forget it kind of strategy where it just shows up predictively at my door every single day, week, whatever frequency I want would be really awesome.
Speaker C:And then for other kinds of products that are more high engagement, where I can go in, I can find someone who can talk to me and who knows me, you know, different courses for different horses.
Speaker B:So as a grocer you have to, you have to differentiate on one of those, those, those elements.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So, so basically I want to recap kind of what you said too.
Speaker B: e the Piggly wiggly moment of: Speaker C:No, I think, I think it is back to that.
Speaker C:Different courses for different horses in that if we think about again, back to, you know, we've been talking about Omni Channel for very, very long, the degree to which companies have really executed on that has been mixed And I think one of the next stages that companies really need to lean into heart is understanding the omnichannel is not delivering the same thing through every single channel.
Speaker C:You do have to deliver a promise through that channel.
Speaker C:Yes, but we as consumers want to use different channels in different ways.
Speaker C:It's no different than different marketing messages.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:You know, you have to market differently, you have to sell differently through all of these.
Speaker C:And I think the.
Speaker C:The future of the grocery store is actually a really, really exciting, really fragmented, really messy kind of space, because for all of my different needs, I'm going to want those different things just better be done.
Speaker C:You know, again, around that core brand promise that caused me to go back to that particular retailer.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Which gets back to your earlier point of investing in things like AI to help you manage all that data so that you can know as much about your consumer to try to try your best to personalize that as their whims are changing day to day and format to format, too, and going back to.
Speaker B:The business strategy, too, so you don't end up in the middle with no value proposition in this landscape that is going to be more fragmented like you're saying.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But having to incorporate technology into that.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Which is the new muscle for a lot of these grocers too.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Well, thank you so much for taking time with us today.
Speaker A:It was so great to talk to you.
Speaker A:We want to give a big thank you again to Simbi for hosting us and all of the interviews that we've been able to bring you from fmi.
Speaker A:We still have a couple more left.
Speaker B:Yeah, we do some good ones, so.
Speaker A:Stay tuned and until then, be careful out there.
