Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Starbucks plans to open a four-level Roastery flagship on Michigan Avenue, its largest space yet for the high-end concept that the coffee giant is rolling out throughout the world.

At 43,000 square feet, Chicago's is the largest among six Roastery emporiums that Starbucks has announced. The size will eclipse a planned 30,000-square-foot space in China, which had been the largest one announced to date.

It will be the third Roastery in the United States, following one that opened in Starbucks' hometown of Seattle in December 2014 and another expected to open in New York in 2018. Roastery stores are set to open in Shanghai this year and in Milan and Tokyo in 2018, the company said....

The next two years will bring about new behavioural realities of device connected retail environments. What sort of shopper habits will develop as new retail technologies become widespread and expected by the consumer? And most importantly, what can retailers actually do about it?

Yes, current retail environments (both on and offline) are data-rich and increasingly personalised. But culture hasn’t caught up yet. In the past, technological advances in retail have been defined by the friction they introduced to the shopping process, rather than convenience. Think of the current state of self-checkouts; theoretically timesaving, but in practice just an often-broken inconvenience. It hardly feels like progress.

But not for long. Retailers are growing savvy and sophisticated in their use of new technologies to improve customer experience (and their bottom line). As these realities take hold and culture adapts around new technological promise, entirely new consumer patterns and expectations will emerge....