Executive Summary

KastlGreissler, a startup founded in 2020, operates in the retail sector and focuses on regional products. In fact, at least 50% of the products offered by KastlGreissler are produced and further processed within 40 km from the respective Kastl. As consumption patterns are quickly changing in modern days, the company is looking for an adequate way to prepare itself for upcoming challenges in the future.

Goal

KastlGreissler established a partnership with the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. The cooperation was created with the intention to gain insights in plausible future developments of consumer behaviours in Austria. The business enterprise entrusted us with the focal question: „How will the consumption
behaviour of the rural population in Austria develop in the next 10 years?“.

Methodology

The project was initiated by analysing the industry KastlGreissler is operating in and getting an overview over the competitive environment. After understanding the circumstances the company is working in, we went on by structuring the project in three stages. The first stage being an exhaustive trend collection which was followed by the scenario development and finally coming up with strategic implications for the project partner. Throughout the trend analysis, we were able to identify more than 100 trends determining the future of our today’s society. We went on by clustering our trend collection according to the PEST framework. In order to fully understand the correlations and synergies within our trend collection we created a causal loop diagram as well as a correlation matrix. When finishing our trend analysis, the collection was narrowed down to approximately 40 trends. The most important trends were then ranked based on their degree of impact on the industry and their degree of uncertainty. As a result, the two major trends “Glocalisation” and “dominance on online sale markets” were identified as key drivers in the retail industry. Those two trends which are highly impactful and uncertain for the industry were then used as a basis for our scenario matrix. Based on the key factors mentioned, namely “Glocalisation” and “Dominance of online sale markets”, four future scenarios were drawn. The axis model was characterized by four extreme points. On the one hand the Glocalisation axis was pointing on Globalisation as one extreme point and Regionality on the other extreme point. The “dominance of online sale markets” was structured by dominance of small companies on online sale markets on the one hand and online sale giants on the other hand. As a result, the four scenarios Globalisation/Online Sale Giants; Regionality/Online Sale Giants; Globalisation/small companies; Regionality/small companies  were created.

Results

After establishing the scenario matrix, we analysed the positioning of KastlGreissler in the scenarios. By applying the TOWS analysis we were able to deliver clear scenario-specific recommendations. Additionally, recommendations which are independent from the scenarios were drawn and delivered to our project partner. Furthermore, an early warning system was introduced in order to give KastlGreissler a framework which examines the probability of the respective scenarios. The early warning signals were structured into light, medium and strong early warning signals. Those signals provide a framework for the projectpartner to estimate the probability of the individual scenarios. All findings were later on thoroughly discussed with the project partner.