Insight Mobility Retail 2030 Project

The mobility and roadside retail sector is on an innovation journey to the future. Insight Research is positioned at the heart of that journey as part of a project called ‘Mobility Retail 2030’ which has been running for the past two years.

In this project we work with a group of leading roadside retailers worldwide in order to operationalise best practices in e-mobility. Our group’s goal is to make sure the roadside retail industry is at the forefront of this new opportunity and for this we have support from our ‘knowledge partner’ McKinsey & Company, as well as backing and sponsorship from Vontier and Kempower.

We agree with the view of fiction writer William Gibson who said, ‘The future has arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed yet’. Part of our project’s remit is to keep the industry at the forefront of this change with regular global insights into this new world. Our group already includes retailers at the forefront of developments and our industry mission gives us market leading access into this opportunity which is moving at incredible pace.

In the near-term, roadside retail/service stations are going to do very well if they offer an efficient, reliable and safe on-the go charging solutions. There is a great need for this and it is rapidly becoming apparent that the higher than anticipated demand for ‘on the go’ charging is going to deliver incremental visits versus ICE customers and a greater uplift in shop sales and margins.

Looking further ahead, new opportunities for retail disruption are also apparent. Looking to 2030, the key question we should perhaps be asking ourselves is not ‘what have customers got used to from a petrol station, c-store, QSR, motorway services?’ But ‘what might customers want from an e-charging break?’

After all, existing propositions for motorists are not new. Service stations are 118 years old,  supermarkets are 105 years old, motorway services are 64 years old and drive-thrus are 48 years old! So another key and provocative question is – how could charging stations use the advantage of new innovations in tech and design to produce propositions that disrupt the huge markets sat on by these formats.

Of course, in common with all things motorist, petrol stations feel most suited towards the single male driver. What happens if instead of defaulting to designing for the average customer, we consider customers who haven’t been thought about as much in the past? This is one of the many questions our group is focusing upon to work out what this future disruption is going to look like. If you’d like to find out more about Insight’s Mobility Retail 2030 project, please contact us below. 

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