With Amazon nipping at the heels of Australian retailers and no sign of slowing down from the wave of international brands coming to our shores, 2017 is set to be a challenging year for the industry.

Delivered by Azurium, the Australian Retail Outlook delivers forecasts for the year ahead for the industry with analysis of the landscape and insights from industry experts, including Peter Birtles from the Super Retail Group, Peta Granger from Lush, Anthony White from the Terry White Group, Norelle Goldring from GfK and Brian Walker from the Retail Doctor Group.

Some of the highlights from the Outlook include:

Retail predictions: It’s time to buckle up for 2017

There’s choppy trading conditions ahead and the possible entry of more international names into the market. Australian retailers will need to lift their e-commerce game and find their points of differentiation.

2017 Retail Survey: Results from Inside Retail’s latest reader survey

There is good news in this year’s findings – trading conditions are less tough now than last year, according to our annual  survey. However, higher rents and inflexible landlords are listed as the main grievances. Read more in our overview of the results from the 15-question survey.

Azurium: Delivering the magic

The first of our expert forecasts looks at intelligent machines and how they are ushering in the era of “predictive commerce”, which will put retailers one step ahead of their customers – but in a beneficial way for all concerned. It is something retailers need to embrace, according to Azurium’s executive director of analytics, Dr Ian Tho, who looks at machine learning and its implementation within retail.

James Stewart and Denis Carruthers of Azurium look into the future of shopping centres, which will need to embrace new technology and adapt to consumer behaviour in order to survive and thrive.

Elsewhere, Paul Greenberg, executive director of Nora.org.au gets back to basics and examines how traditional retail basics still hold true despite convergence, artificial intelligence, both, drones and big data.

2016 Scorecard winners and losers

Azurium’s James Stewart, Dr Ian Tho, Neeraj Sharma, Mark Tippet, Denis Carruthers and Ben Kite look back at the winners and losers of 2016 and predict the big trends of 2017.

To order your free copy now, visit the Inside Retail website.