The retail landscape changes continuously and faces various challenges. These include exploring new growth opportunities, selling new kinds of merchandise, operating in new geographic and business sectors, finding new customers and understanding demographic changes.

Moreover, competitive pressures are forcing retailers to make difficult technology choices to drive efficiency and enhance the customer experience. 

In the past, some forms of cost- and service-intensive distribution have dramatically declined in significance, others are going through a renaissance, and the discounters have consistently extended their market positions. 

The factors underlying this development, which include an increased convenience orientation and price sensitivity on the part of consumers (smart shopping) and the trend towards one-stop shopping, are reasonably well understood, leading to a strategy of expanding market share – principally through the price component – at the expense of competitors. 

It was these altered circumstances that led retailers to focus their own activities once more on their core competencies, enabling them to reposition themselves in the mature retail market after a generally brief consolidation phase. 

At KPMG we understand these issues and work with some of the highest profile and innovative retailers – improving internal controls, undertaking global due diligence and assurance, implementing cost and tax saving packages –  to help achieve and sustain competitive advantage. 

KPMG also works with department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, health and beauty specialists, specialty chains and other retailers. Our clients draw on our professional advice and technical resources to augment their internal capabilities and to gain a fresh, independent perspective on important strategic and operational issues.