The Pace of Change in Retail Has Never Been Faster with Richard Lim | RTS 2026
In this Omni Talk Retail episode, recorded live at Retail Technology Show 2026 in London from the Vusion podcast studio, Chris Walton speaks with Richard Lim, CEO and Founder of Retail Economics, about the accelerating pace of change reshaping retail.
Richard shares how today’s macroeconomic environment, from inflation pressures to global energy shifts, is forcing retailers to rethink how they operate and respond to rapidly evolving consumer behavior. At the same time, AI is fundamentally changing how people discover, research, and increasingly purchase products.
He outlines a three-stage framework for how AI is transforming retail, from off-site discovery through platforms like ChatGPT, to on-site AI assistants, to the rise of agentic browsers that can act on behalf of consumers. Across all of it, one theme stands out: discoverability is the next battleground.
The conversation also dives into how different categories will be impacted at different speeds, why high-consideration purchases are especially vulnerable to AI disruption, and how retailers need to rethink search, data, and digital presence for an AI-driven future.
Key Topics Covered:
• Why the pace of change in retail is accelerating faster than ever
• How macroeconomic pressures are shaping consumer behavior
• The three stages of AI adoption in retail
• Why discoverability is becoming the new SEO
• How AI is changing product search, discovery, and decision-making
• Which retail categories will be disrupted first and why
• The growing role of agentic AI in automating purchases
• Why behavioral economics should guide retail strategy
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail’s live coverage from Retail Technology Show 2026!
#RTS2026 #RetailTechnologyShow #OmniTalkRetail #RetailEconomics #RichardLim #AIinRetail #RetailStrategy #ConsumerBehavior #RetailInnovation #Ecommerce
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton and we are coming to you live from the Retail Technology show at the exclusive Vuzion podcast studio.
Speaker A:Now joining me is Richard Lim.
Speaker A:Richard is the CEO and founder of Retail Economics.
Speaker A:Richard, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker A:Thanks for being here.
Speaker B:Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What brings you to rts?
Speaker B:I've been to RTS for at least three or four years.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker B:On the trot.
Speaker B:I love rts.
Speaker B:It's the place where so many senior retailers come.
Speaker B:It's the hub of communication.
Speaker B:People are talking about, you know, the cutting edge of what's happening.
Speaker B:And it's been kind of like Gen AI, Gen AI, Gen AI for the last couple of days.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It is pretty fun.
Speaker A:It's been a pretty fun conference, I have to admit.
Speaker A:It's my first time here and I've enjoyed it a lot.
Speaker A:All right, so let's talk about your background.
Speaker A:So your background is really interesting.
Speaker A:You were the chief economist at the British Retail Consortium, right?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And, and, and, and now what are you doing?
Speaker B:So I founded retail economics.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:10 Years ago.
Speaker A:10 Years ago.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:10 Years ago.
Speaker B:It's been a wild ride.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But, but 10 years ago, I guess the, the, the, the beginnings were that I was, I was at the brc.
Speaker B:I was talking lots to lots of retailers.
Speaker B:I was creating data products, and I just thought to myself, this is something I want to do on my own.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Something that I want to, to create.
Speaker B:And I've always been a bit entrepreneurial.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:So even when I was younger, I actually started my first business when I was about 10.
Speaker A:Oh, really?
Speaker A:You're one of those guys?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:All right, nice.
Speaker B:Pewter.
Speaker B:Pewter animals.
Speaker B:But then progress into.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Running my own economics consultancy focused specifically on retail.
Speaker A:Did you say pewter animals?
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker A:How big were said pewter animals?
Speaker A:Tiny, like little miniature type animals.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah, People used to go to craft shows.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:We're going a bit off topic here.
Speaker B:That's okay.
Speaker B:Shows had their dogs.
Speaker A:It's retail.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You sell pewter animals.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you got the entrepreneurial bug at an early age.
Speaker A:That's a typical story of people that are, you know, focused on doing their entrepreneurial thing even later in life, like the two of us.
Speaker A:All right, so you're a research.
Speaker A:So you're consultancy based.
Speaker A:You provide research insights to the retail and CPG community or mainly the retailers?
Speaker B:A bit of both.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And actually, as the business has evolved, we've expanded the range of different options.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:That we provide.
Speaker B:The proposition has expanded.
Speaker B:So life started as an economics consultancy where we would do economic analysis, econometric modeling.
Speaker B:My background actually is a master's in behavioral economics.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:A lot of that.
Speaker B:But we're probably more accurately described these days as a B2B thought leadership consultancy.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:With PR and comms, where we service lots of providers of services into the retail sector.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So some of our clients, for example, would be TikTok and AWS and Microsoft and NatWest and Barclays.
Speaker B:So the common thread here is that anyone that's interested in what's happening in the retail space, in the consumer space, and how that's affecting the economy would be interested in kind of research.
Speaker A:Okay, got it, got it.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of research companies in this space.
Speaker A:So what differentiates you from them, particularly in those clients you're serving?
Speaker B:I think the big difference is the application of the data.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And so we always look to try to find original, unique perspectives to create our own proprietary data, our own proprietary insights.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And then we use that as a vehicle to try to help businesses grow their brand awareness within the retail sector.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And if you can do that through kind of like amazing research and really focus on the topics that resonate with the industry, that's the kind of the blueprint.
Speaker B:That's really what.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You get the reputation for it too.
Speaker A:All right, so it seems like there's quite a lot going on in the macroeconomic environment now.
Speaker A:Would you agree with that?
Speaker B:You could say that.
Speaker A:One could say that.
Speaker B:One could say that things have changed pretty significantly over the last couple of months.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And probably going to change again in the time we take completing this 10 minute podcast.
Speaker A:You were just on stage, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:What did you, what did you talk about on stage?
Speaker A:What'd you share?
Speaker B:Well, the macroeconomic environment is incredibly complex at the moment.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And so we were looking at giving our view on what the outlook looks like for the retail sector.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:The last couple of months, there's been obviously a huge shift in what's happened with, with global energy markets because of what's happening with Iran at the moment.
Speaker B:So for us, and what's important to our clients is how is that going to affect UK consumers?
Speaker B:So another inflationary shock on top of all of the.
Speaker B:All of the.
Speaker B:The challenges households have had to deal with already because of the cost of living crisis.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But then crucially, what does that mean for the retail sector?
Speaker B:How are consumers going to adapt their behavior?
Speaker B:How are they going to shift their spending and all across the mix of everything else that's going on, whether that's social commerce, whether that's Gen AI, whether that's marketplaces, there's a whole range of other things that are going on against a complex backdrop of retailers suffering ongoing waves of rising operating costs.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:And I want to get to some of those too.
Speaker A:But I'm curious, as you spoke with the audience today, was there any one big takeaway that you wanted them to make sure that they left with or understood in terms of how to deal with operating in that macroeconomic environment right now?
Speaker B:I think it's the pace of change.
Speaker B:The pace, the pace of change is something that we haven't seen for, you know, the 20 years ever been, you know, studying the industry.
Speaker B:So much of that pace is being driven by AI.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And so there's, you know, there's a couple of ways to look at it, but there's how retailers and brands are integrating AI into their business, how they're driving operational efficiencies, how it's changing their operating models.
Speaker B:But then from a consumer perspective, how's AI changing the way that people shop, how they research, how they discover new products, how they're using platforms like GPT, Claude Gemini to discover products, but eventually, and yeah, the US and is ahead of where we are in the UK but eventually how they're going to purchase products as well on these platforms and.
Speaker A:What are the implications of.
Speaker A:And what is your.
Speaker A:Actually maybe ask me ask you that differently.
Speaker A:What has your research shown in terms of the proclivity here in the UK for consumers to use those types of new AI tools and how is it impacting things like discoverability search for the average UK retailer?
Speaker B:So the reality is that the use of AI is already widespread.
Speaker B:And so what our research shows is that 70% of consumers are already using AI on a regular basis.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:38% Of consumers are using it for retail specific purposes.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:So this might be searching for better prices, it might be searching for technical information, it might be searching for, you know, next day delivery.
Speaker B:But re.
Speaker B:But consumers are increasingly using these platforms, platforms to help support their decision making on that customer journey.
Speaker B:And I think one of the takeaways would be the pace of change and for businesses to understand how it's going to affect their consumers and where they sit in the market.
Speaker B:Because the impact is going to be really uneven across different parts of the industry.
Speaker B:It's going to be, the adoption is going to be uneven across different kind of consumer cohorts.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And verticals just like we saw with E commerce, really when you think about it, at the end of the day, I'm curious.
Speaker B:Lots of parallels there actually.
Speaker A:Yeah, tell me more.
Speaker B:Well, a reflection of talking to a lot of my retail clients is exactly that.
Speaker B:You know, they're looking at the same conversations that they were having about e commerce 20 years ago.
Speaker B:Do we have a website?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You know, how should we set it up?
Speaker B:And then mobile comes along?
Speaker B:Do we need to mobile optimize our site?
Speaker B:Do we create an app?
Speaker B:All of those conversations are reminiscent of, of what's happening at the moment.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's really, I mean it's really interesting.
Speaker A:Like, yeah, I've been, I was having a conversation on my weekly podcast yesterday about like, you know, should you do your app inside of ChatGPT?
Speaker A:Like that's a legitimate question to be asking yourself.
Speaker A:Is it, is the juice worth the squeeze on that approach?
Speaker A:Which gets me my next question.
Speaker A:Like you hadn't, when I was doing my research, you had an interesting three stage framework that you've been using to talk about agentic AI.
Speaker A:Can you talk us through those stages?
Speaker A:And then I'm curious where our conversation will go from there.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:So the adoption and use of AI, I think are gonna, is gonna manifest in three main ways.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:The first is off site AI.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:And so this is where consumers are using platforms like GPT, Claude Gemini to help in that research and discovery phase.
Speaker B:But that is consumers using kind of those platforms but then increasingly using kind of AI agents to go off and do some of that research on their behalf.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:The second area is around on site AI.
Speaker B:And so this is for example, if you go on to Amazon, Amazon have got Rufus.
Speaker B:Rufus.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so you can go on, you can search, you can prompt and you can search for different, you can search for different products.
Speaker B:But increasingly other retailers are doing that.
Speaker B:So B and Q have got their own AI agent.
Speaker B:H& M are experimenting in that area.
Speaker B:Lots of retailers, we're experimenting with agents on site.
Speaker B:I think what's really interesting from a consumer perspective is that in many instances consumers are becoming so much more accustomed to prompting.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So much more accustomed to having that exposure with platforms like GPT.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Their expectation of what they want from a retail experience on their website is going to need to reflect the kind of sophistication that an experience they're having with, with ChatGPT and, and other LLM models.
Speaker B:Third area would be agentic browsers.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And so this might be Comet with anthropic.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Or sorry, Perplexity.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Or kind of agentic browser might be Gemini.
Speaker B:But having an AI agent on a browser where a consumer can then ask it to do specific things within that environment, I think a really interesting development.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So that's a great framework.
Speaker A:So I'm curious, as a retailer, should I be more focused on any piece of that relative to another?
Speaker B:I think the challenge is discoverability.
Speaker A:Discoverability.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And so how are retail brands going to ensure that they can become, they can surface their content and be discoverable on these platforms?
Speaker A:On the platforms.
Speaker B:And so what does that mean in terms of the future of search?
Speaker B:The, you know, the last 25 years has been an obsession over clicks and how to optimize SEO on platforms and obviously all of the techniques behind that.
Speaker B:A new set of metrics is emerging around how they become discoverable on AI platforms and then also how do they need to think about their data structure, their, their, their, their, their strategy around how to deal with AI agents that are coming onto their website.
Speaker B:All of these require a new mindset in terms of how they're going to be discovered.
Speaker A:So you've got to still show up in search and whatever the, whatever form search takes in the future, you've got to show up there.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And I think, and also just understanding that this is going to happen at different speed and to a different extent across different industry groups as well.
Speaker B:So some of the research that we've done shows that, for example, consumers are more likely to use it for searching for electricals.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So and this is where the specification,.
Speaker A:High consideration product categories, high consideration, high value.
Speaker B:But also when you go into, as most consumers will go into the purchase of, let's say laptop.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:They might know what brand, they might know, they've got price point in mind.
Speaker B:They might know the memory they want, the processor speed they want, the weights or whatever.
Speaker B:So those specifications need to be surfaced during that kind of prompt search experience on an LLM platform.
Speaker B:And so those kinds of areas where it's more complex, the discoveries kind of phase is a bit more considered high value specifications.
Speaker B:So understanding where it's going to impact the different sectors fastest and to a greater extent and how that's going to affect your business and your customers, I think that's really important.
Speaker A:I'm curious, do you have any data on the agentic side of that?
Speaker A:Like is there correlations in terms of where do you think agentic will adapt the fastest or impact the industries the fastest or the categories behaving differently in that respect from what the research is showing?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So in Terms of the, the biggest impact, electricals, I think is probably ranks at the top.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:At the other end of scale, it will be platform, it will be categories like, like jewelry.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker B:So a more tactile experience, higher value purchase.
Speaker B:People want to have that personal experience.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:In store.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think food's probably quite high up there.
Speaker A:That's where I was that was leading the question.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So food say more.
Speaker B:Low value, repetitive purchase, low risk if it goes wrong.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:80 Of consumers go to the same supermarket, 80 at a time and buy 80 of the same products.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so that is kind of like ripe to be automated, but also some services as well.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:I think to myself, do you enjoy renewing your car insurance?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Me neither.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so I'd quite happily outsource the renewal of my car insurance if I knew that it was with a reputable company.
Speaker B:I wasn't paying more than I did the previous year.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:The reviews were pretty good.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And so actually I'll quite happily outsource the renewal process for car insurance.
Speaker A:That's interesting.
Speaker B:Or maybe my home insurance, maybe my energy supplier.
Speaker B:So there are certain, certain product categories where I think could be disrupted.
Speaker A:Quite the replacement of my air filters every three months or whatever.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:My furnace filters.
Speaker A:All right, so you've made your, you've made your career offering up research and insights based on like what we were just sharing with me.
Speaker A:Now, I've never asked this question before, so I'm going to ask it of you.
Speaker A:Is there, is there any question that you would like a senior retail executive to ask you, but that they never have?
Speaker B:Great question.
Speaker B:How soon can you send the invoice?
Speaker B:Other than that.
Speaker A:That's a great answer.
Speaker A:That's a great answer.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:Your payment terms are like a week, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's awesome.
Speaker A:Awesome, awesome.
Speaker A:Anything else?
Speaker B:I think it's just how to integrate data into their strategic decision making and understanding that.
Speaker A:That's really interesting.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Just like understanding that behavioral economics plays a really, really important role.
Speaker B:So try to integrate that market information to lead the strategic decision making.
Speaker B:That's based on kind of insights from the research that we do.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker B:Good stuff.
Speaker A:Good stuff.
Speaker A:And great advice too.
Speaker A:All right, well, Richard Lim, thank you for joining us.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:Especially at the end of the day, on day two, it's always a pleasure to have a conversation with someone like yourself.
Speaker A:So thanks to Vuzion and the Retail Technology show for helping us put together all this great content all week long with fabulous people like Richard.
Speaker A:And to all of you out there, as always, be careful out there.
