As we are well aware, many traditional brick-and-mortar stores are evolving in response to the impact of online shopping — which more and more people are using both to acquire information and to make purchases without visiting a store. Big changes are ahead.

A logical question is: What roles will be most important for store retailers as we forecast the near future (two to three years)? Let us look to the following for part of the answer. As eMarketer reports:

“A new report from Avanade, a provider of digital cloud services, and EKN Research found that while nearly 80% of retailer professionals worldwide currently believe traditional sales are the primary business function of stores, that will change in the next two to three years. By 2020, traditional sales activities will fall to the bottom of what retailers expect from stores. At the top will be theme-based stores, fulfillment centers and pop-ups.”