Agenda

Pour la première fois dans le cadre de L’événement STORE, le CCCD organise le Cinq à Sept, un cocktail de réseautage destiné exclusivement aux membres du Québec. Il s’agit d’une introduction exclusive à cette conférence qui permettra de vivre l’expérience STORE en compagnie de visages familiers. Gratuit pour les membres détaillants, ce cocktail offre de très intéressantes occasions de commandites et de partenariats à nos membres fournisseurs.

New this year at RCC STORE 23 delegates from Quebec or who operate in Quebec are invited to join us for a private cocktail reception. RCC/CCCD Retail Members are invited to this exclusive event that will allow you to enjoy the STORE conference among familiar faces.

Retailers have had to make immense changes, at incredible speed, to their business practices and operations as a result of exceptional economic pressures and uncertainties. In an environment of contradicting narratives, having a fact-based, Canadian, economic framework on which to consider what we know will impact Canadian retail and what we also need to be watchful on will help every retailer both better navigate around the potential pitfalls and push toward the opportunities ahead.

Technology has undeniably changed how we shop – but has it changed why we buy? How have consumers’ needs for novelty, connection, escape, and magic been satisfied? And is there more they need? World-renowned retail futurist Doug Stephens, explores how the world’s most inspiring retailers are delighting customers through sensory experience differentiation – the art of retail – in a world where hyper-technologized consumerism is ubiquitous. Re-discover how design, creativity, and content are once-again breathing magic into retail – and driving bottom-line profitability.

Fast Five Sponsor Highlight

Together with Millennials, Gen Z wields unparalleled influence on the future of retail, driving digital payment trends that continue to reshape the industry. Amex Canada shares the latest update and comparison to their 2019 study to explore the impact of the last four years on the mindset of Gen-Z shoppers and the rapid changes within the retail landscape. Join Kerri-Ann Santaguida, Vice President and General Manager, Merchant Services Canada, American Express, for a look at the expectations and preferences among this increasingly powerful consumer audience and the opportunities for retailers to win with them.

The pandemic, hybrid workplaces, immigration, and inflation have triggered staggering global changes in consumer behaviors and buying habits which have redefined how consumers spend their discretionary dollars. Circana, a leading international market information company, will provide a “real time” snapshot on how these issues are impacting consumers’ buying behaviors in Canada, and will explore the opportunities, based on this data, that retailers should consider to capture discretionary spending trends over the next 6 months.

With global demand for luxury branded products and watches, Birks sought a solution for tracking customers’ preferences and responding with options when stock was replenished. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Thinkmax promptly built an advanced waitlist solution. In this session, Patrik, Cassaundra, and Salvatore will discuss how this innovative solution helped Birks meet the demands of their luxury brand customers. Attendees will gain insights into how technology can enable luxury retailers to provide a personalized and seamless customer experience in the face of supply chain challenges.

This presentation will provide a shopper’s perspective on the impacts felt in-store due to labour shortages in retail.  Not only will it focus on perceived impacts by industry sector but also look at consumer attitudes towards potential long-term solutions.

Agile retail is needed now more than ever to help retailers respond quickly to changing business landscapes, compliance requirements, and consumer demands. To do so, retailers must understand consumer and associate behaviors, develop actionable insights, and have the tools and strategy to deliver outcomes based on those insights.

Learn how to gain greater visibility into store operations and leverage AI’s power to uncover additional insights from data and operations, and generally do more with less.

The Canadian mall concept has evolved over the years and the mall of tomorrow will become a hub of daily life consisting of a social gathering place, food and entertainment, fulfillment and logistics, discovery and recreation – and of course shopping. As spaces at Canada’s largest shopping centres become available retailers across the country are watching the leasing news to see who might fill the void or what creative solutions landlords are exploring. Attend this session for a panel discussion on the future of shopping centres and visions for a new hub for daily life.

Lunch & Learn

Understand how you can make more informed business decisions with the use of customer and industry payment data. Join Sean McCormick, Data Expert at Moneris, for our Canadian Consumer Behaviour presentation. Discover the untapped potential of your business and make more informed decisions by learning how to use customer and industry data to your advantage.

Over the past few years Tik Tok has seen explosive growth with numbers that continue to climb. TikTok is responding to user preferences by serving content that meets their current interests with short-form videos. As the popularity of the platform has grown significantly, brands have had to navigate how they ensure their brand image and standards are met while allowing influencers to create authentic content in their own personal voice and style. In this session attendees will see creative examples of how brands can come to life on TikTok, grow and connect with audiences and be entertaining. Leave this session with actionable tips that will help grow both paid and organic content.

With more than half of consumers switching brands over the last few years, retailers must retain customers and increase their share of wallet with personalized, relevant, and frictionless engagement. The challenge is acquisition costs are up and marketing budgets are down. Join this session to hear how retailers are monetizing their loyal shoppers with new and creative products, services, and business lines — driving brand loyalty while preserving margins.

In Store experience is a critical part of the customer journey leading retailers to ask questions about design best practices for engagement, creating category destinations, footprint size and localized solutions. TC Transcontinental invites you to get expert insights from leading designers who will pull the curtain back on these critical questions. Leave this session feeling inspired and with action items you can take back to the team.

Organizations seeking leadership transformation succeed by addressing policies and practices that misalign how women are seen, and the qualities and experiences people tend to associate with the current generation of leaders. In this session our panel discusses risks incurred when women are not equally represented in leadership and share strategies for how tangible change can be fostered.

Memorable retail experiences build loyalty and trust, and for ALDO customers that means being able to buy the right size at the right store at the right time. Optimal size curve distribution and right packaging recommendation help businesses cut down on inventory costs and prevent stock-out. In this session ALDO shares their experience of the collaborative journey with SAS using relevant and accurate size profiles to ensure maximum in stock while delivering a lower cost to service demand. Discover why ALDO prioritized the packaging solution and how it is providing needed data for better decision many and cost management.

Kostya Polyakov, National Industry Leader for Consumer & Retail with KPMG Canada, will explore how retailers are leveraging data for customer analytics, market entry, and predictive demand planning, while balancing the concepts for growth and resiliency. Gain insights on how planet-focused initiatives such as sustainable materials, reduced waste, and carbon-neutral production are influencing global supply chain trends.

The increasingly diverse ways in which consumers seek information have also evolved the best ways to keep your company at the top of search engine results. Unfortunately, most organizations are still working with the “old rules” of SEO. DAC’s Jenna Watson, Senior Vice President, Digital Media, will help you identify the top 3 SEO practices that are no longer effective and why retailers must look at new approaches get to the top.

In an era where digital interfaces are increasingly being used to help humanize interactions and where people are at the same time yearning for deeper, genuine, connections, how can employers embrace hearable, feelable and wearable technology – powered by data, intelligence, sensors and more – to help people in the workplace to relate to one another? Shingy, the Digital Prophet, will enthrall with his digital forecast that looks at how new technologies will impact the employee experience in the blended physical and virtual work world – that will continue to stretch the definition of “hybrid”- and shares what trends retailers might consider to renew and elevate these work relationships.

Purpose is quickly becoming the intangible but incredibly powerful driver motivating today’s most successful CEO’s and companies. In this session, Afdhel Aziz, Chief Purpose Officer with Conspiracy of Love, and author of Good is the New Cool: The Principles of Purpose, shares how leaders can identify their authentic, personal “north star” and empower their teams to action a shared purpose. Learn how you and your organization can be a part of this tectonic leadership shift that is not just changing people and businesses but also creating meaningful, world-wide transformation.

Fast Five Sponsor Highlight

To help small business owners better understand the shifting Canadian payments landscape, join Marilu Gaudio as she unveils our first annual State of Canadian Payments report. We hope this report will equip business owners with the knowledge and data needed to choose payment solutions that can help them prosper in 2023 and beyond.

Changes in technology and consumer media habits have enabled retailers to consider new data-driven media businesses that have the potential to generate incremental, high-margin revenue. First-party data is an increasing priority for retailers looking to leverage customer relationships, online and store traffic plus loyalty data to close the loop for their media partners. Loblaw Media’s Alfredo Tan discusses Retail Media Networks and what it takes to be successful, what clients are looking for, and the opportunity ahead for the industry to work together for strong client experiences.

For 60 years Retail Council of Canada has been the voice of retail and now represents over 45,000 storefronts. Santo Ligotti, Vice President of Marketing and Member Services shares an update on member-only committees that offer the opportunity for unique collaboration with industry peers to help shape policies that affect the future of retail.

Artificial intelligence is changing everything – including retail. This profoundly powerful technology is unleashing creative thinking on a massive scale that was almost unthinkable just a few months ago. Eric Morris, Managing Director and Head of Retail with Google Canada shares how retailers can use AI to succeed in an ever-changing, highly competitive, and dynamic industry to unlock new game-changing potential in their businesses. Discover how you can use AI to uniquely understand what your consumers want, forecast demand, simplify the supply chain, improve marketing effectiveness, and provide a more personalized customer experience.

The role of Data and AI continues to evolve and expand in the retail industry, with capabilities growing as quickly as they can be adopted. Join Andrew Go, Chief Digital & Data Officer at Staples Canada, and Sangeetha Chandru, Chief Practice Officer, Retail at Fractal, as they discuss the pivotal role of Data & AI in shaping the Future of Retail.

Operationalizing a sustainability strategy requires the collaboration of the entire organization.

Holt Renfrew CEO Sebastian Picardo, Calgary Co-op CEO Ken Keelor, and Roopa Davé, Partner, ESG KPMG Canada, chat with Michael Zabaneh, VP Sustainability at Retail Council of Canada to discuss how transparency is a critical part of the journey, the importance of tracking and reporting on data, and mapping a sustainability stairway including science based targets.

Overview of the latest Caddle research delving into consumer behaviour with retailer loyalty programs in Canada.  Understanding Canadian consumer preferences when it comes to loyalty programs, including the types of rewards and incentives that are most appealing, as well as the factors that influence consumer participation and engagement inside the omnichannel environment.

Online shopping has long held the advantage when it comes to gathering data and personalizing the customer experience. Not only has digital retail disrupted the industry, but customers now expect a personalized experience whenever (and however) they shop – including at bricks and mortar venues. This session will outline how you can leverage store-level information and hyper-local behavioral insights to make informed decisions and elevate each shopper’s store experience. Bell, one of Canada’s largest retailers, shares how they leverage AI and actionable analytics to enhance the in-store experience– all while driving costs down across their 800 Canadian locations.

Lunch and Learn

The pandemic and inflation have driven shoppers to plan more than ever before. 83% of Canadians are now checking prices online before they go to the store, with half saying this is a new behavior. How can retailers win at this crucial decision point by moving beyond ads to shopper-preferred digital experiences? In this session, Flipp’s SVP of Technology & Partnerships, Matthew Cheung, will share some of the principles behind creating digital shopping experiences that provide shoppers utility and create engagement, while also helping retailers drive baskets, trade leverage & measurable ROI.

Mountain Equipment Company’s (MEC) steadfast commitment to its people, product excellence, and maintaining strong community-based relationships with its consumers, eased its rocky transition from a cooperative to a private company with expanded operations. MEC’s Vice President Marketing Michele Guimond shares how this iconic Canadian retailer’s remarkable revival, that was rooted in its foundational business philosophy, continues to put MEC at the at the top of the trusted brands list and on a strong and sustainable growth trajectory.

Fast Five Sponsor Highlight

As an enabler for retailers, RLG monitors and provides compliance services to customers across 80 countries globally. Patrick Wiedeman, CEO of Reconomy Comply Division and Reverse Logistics Group will showcase unique retail insights based on experiences in markets like Europe, the UK and Latin America. Canadian retailers will learn how they can streamline complex EPR reporting and contribute to a more circular economy.

Effectively building and maintaining consumers’ loyalty and trust as changing demographics, values, and lifestyles drive new shopping behaviours can only be achieved by working with today’s most relevant data. To truly understand evolving sensitivities and how retailers can more effectively reach their target audiences when and where they want to shop – all while considering the emerging importance of ESG best practices – needs a new perspective on how to leverage data. Jan Kestle, President of Environics Analytics, sits down with leading Canadian retailers to discuss how these trends continue to evolve and how these retailers are addressing the nuances in news ways through more innovative consumer segmentation.

While leading DEI at Nike Inc, Jarvis Sam saw an incredible opportunity in how to improve and incorporate its DEI strategies. Learn how, through his novel, multi-phased approach, he was able to successfully turnaround and operationalize Nike’s vision – ahead of plan- by focusing on engaging frontline teams who, in turn, organically and enthusiastically participated in transforming their workplace’s culture of inclusivity.