Accelerating retail-innovation design for smart services via foresight approach and case-based design

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is taken as a dramatic upgrade of the third revolution. Compared with prior industrial revolutions, Industry 4.0 put more focus on the creation of networks and interconnectivities among existing assets based on Internet of things (IoT). This study attempts to depict inno-service concepts with the commonality in different categories based on IoT technology and the concepts of cyber-physical systems (CPS) from both the problem-analysis side and resolution-analysis perspective. The problem-analysis utilizes a socio-economic needs analysis, which compromises shopping district categories analysis and categories needs analysis, to obtain the main categories of the shopping district and key problems of it. In addition, the resolution-analysis utilizes a case-based design approach, which compromises case recall and case adapt to refer to the related IoT cases, and then smart shopping themes are proposed. Based on the socio-economic needs analysis including the development in the practical industry, literature of shopping-mall management and the district survey, this research identified six categories for a mega city's major district functions, namely (1) tourism, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) and accommodations, (2) food, beverage and supermarkets, (3) cultural and creative sectors and bookstores, (4) furniture, furnishings and appliances, (5) clothing, accessories and cosmetics, (6) cinema, recreation and sports. In addition, based on the 54 smart-service cases in the global environment from the six classifications, the most valuable solutions from the case base are adapted and reused to meet the current needs and situation. Thus, six smart shopping themes are designed as a CPS-based services among the above six classifications, including (1) Ubiquitous cultural creative street side integration services, (2) Smart food and restaurant services, (3) Future make-up and fast fashion services, (4) Smart living experiential marketing services, (5) Entertainment-based innovative services, (6) MICE Integrated Services. The results can be utilized for researchers to better find more foresight themes efficiently and effectively and for firms to adopt these six new concepts to design the detailed service specification with business concept innovation or business process improvement.