This year celebrates the 35th anniversary since the release of Back to the Future Part II (the film where they go to the future), so we thought it might be fun to explore themes and predictions in this cult classic to see how close they came to reality and where they might inform real retail innovation today. 

Although it was a vision of 2015 way back when the film was made in 1989, we find a mix of imagination with timeless lessons about technology, customer engagement, and adaptability. Futuristic technology often conjures visions of device-heavy retail environments and virtual interactions. Still, it is the invisible digital layer that will continue to set forward-thinking retail destinations apart in 2025. 

Anticipating Consumer Expectations

In Back to the Future Part II, the future (now) includes hoverboards, electronic payments, flying cars and VR headsets. While only some of these ideas have materialised, they reflect how imagining the future can inspire genuine advances and also align with customer desires.

Lesson for 2025: Be bold  

Embrace bold, forward-thinking ideas to anticipate and create demand. The world is undergoing seismic shifts, and many brands are responding with dramatic overhauls. Some are desperate gambles, while others are well-planned transformations happening quietly behind the scenes. Take Jaguar’s recent rebrand — it’s unconventional, surprising, and a bold signal that a dramatic change is coming, sparking conversations everywhere. Their approach breaks away from traditional norms, teasing a new era. What exact changes will emerge from the brand are still yet to be seen, but  it is a good illustration of how bold moves can set the stage for potential future success. 

In today’s fast-moving landscape, standing still simply isn’t an option. However, boldness must be backed by deep analysis. If we are only relying on surface-level data or simplistic metrics, we can easily be led astray. True progress demands getting into the weeds, understanding the nuances, and uncovering the key factors that will shape your future. Success comes to those willing to dig deeper and act strategically alongside a willingness to be daring.

The Role of Nostalgia

The film’s recurring theme of nostalgia reminds us that while people love innovation, they also value connection to the past.

Lesson for 2025: Old Fashioned Service 

Combine cutting-edge innovation with nostalgic elements. For example, reimagining a classic approach to customer service where people’s interactions are improved with smart insights. This can improve performance to attract new and reward existing customers or forge deeper working bonds with your brand partners. 

Measure the impact of your interactions and efforts. Much like any other area of retail, we need to know if what we are doing works and then fine-tune actions to make measurable gains. Customer service is as important a metric as any other and can be used alongside other KPIs to discern insight and explore relationships and correlations. Whilst many teams have taken this on board and are being highly praised, people still hark back to a time when you could get good service everywhere. Get those mystery shoppers out there and test how close you are to the gold standard. 

Time-Traveling Data

All of the Back to the Future films emphasise how knowing the past (or the future) can give a competitive advantage.  In Part II, Biff’s infamous sports almanac contains the results of major games and races. 

Lesson for 2025: Data is the almanac of modern retail

Real-time data and predictive analytics are increasingly critical in managing retail destinations. Movement tracking, dwell-time analysis, catchment data and brand performance monitoring etc. help destination managers make informed decisions about tenant mix, store placement, and marketing campaigns. For example, using heat-mapping technology to identify high-traffic areas can guide strategic placement of key tenants or promotional activations, maximising engagement. Similarly, predictive analytics can inform event programming or brand selection based on customer preferences and trends.

AI forecasting is also revolutionising predictive analytics by simplifying the process and eliminating the complexities of traditional methods. With just a few clicks now, tools can give you the ability to customise your insights by applying filters and adjusting variables, tailoring forecasts to answer your unique questions. We are facilitating our clients to dive deep into the past with their historical data and emerge with predictions that empower smarter, data-driven decisions as they look to the future. 

Adaptability to Change

Marty and Doc Brown constantly adapt to new challenges, illustrating the importance of agility.

Lesson for 2025: Agility 

The traditional anchor-tenant model is being redefined to include a mix of shorter leases and pop-ups, digitally native retailers, and boutique offerings to create unique places and more flexibility. Retail destination managers are curating a diverse tenant mix that reflects changing consumer interests, such as fitness studios or culinary and leisure experiences. Thematic zoning informed by data insights, such as organising clusters of stores around specific themes like wellness, technology, or fashion, helps create distinct identities for spaces that can adapt with consumer shifts. It also offers points of comparison at a portfolio level for things that don’t sit within common boundaries. 

Personalisation and Immersive Experiences

The film’s futuristic but nostalgically themed Café ’80s shows a blended mix of digital ordering, which is now a very familiar picture in restaurants today. However, the prediction that people living in 2015 would design 80’s themed cafés is perhaps interesting in itself, given the rise of immersive hospitality. 

Lesson for 2025: Personalise and make it memorable 

Not every moment can or should be a wow experience, but by leveraging technologies, you can offer customers a self-selecting experience that allows them to choose when they want to engage. Through AR, VR and AI-driven personalisation, placemakers can create unforgettable shopping destinations with the right mix of wow moments and digital and interactive experiences to suit their destinations. Whilst it is not about transforming all retail or restaurants into theme parks, some exciting immersive operators take themed shops and hospitality to new sensory levels. For example, I recently saw the founders of Ephemera Group speaking about their immersive restaurants in Paris, where spaces are customisable and include taking diners to space or under the sea.  

Join us at Retail Destination Live 2025, where we will be delving further into the views of different professionals on the future of technology in retail with a panel session. The agenda shaping up promises important debate and learnings for the year ahead. 

RLI Host, Owner & Publisher Jayne Rafter

The conference covered the shifts from transaction to the experience economy, as well as trends like edutainment, hospitality excellence, and collaboration between public and private investment to stimulate economic and community impact. For us, authenticity, as well as analytics, came through as a guiding path. Here are just a few key insights we took away from the day. 

“The smaller the world gets, it seems the bigger it gets too.”

Dimitri Lalagos, SVP American Dream (New York) 

Joining a panel alongside operators of diverse destinations in Macao, Riyadh, and Dubai, Dimitri commented that, as competitive as New York is with high retail saturation, we have to think about today’s competition on a global scale because there is so much wallet share.  

Dimitri Lalagos, SVP American Dream

Adapting to the customers’ new needs post-pandemic, leisure now represents 55-60% of the retail mix at American Dream. Dimitri advised that their job as retail developers is constantly evolving, allowing space for their retail and leisure partners to evolve too. By analysing data to accommodate partners better, “it’s about making space for them to put their best foot forward.”

“You are not talking about buildings. You are going into relationship management.”

Timothy Jones, SVP Retail Sands China

Responsible for 850 retail stores and 2.2 million square feet of retail space, Sands Shoppes Macau captured 40% of retail spend across the city in 2023. With Macau forecasted to attract 33 million visitors this year, Timothy spoke about the essential need to understand what the customer does on the property and the use of data and analytics to curate the experience. “What makes it tick are the people that visit and the people that make it work”, so he said it is about understanding that human relationship to understand how things stick together and be successful. 

 “Why can’t the high street be as dynamic as my social feed?”

Ariel Haroush, Founder & CEO OF Outform | Founder & Chairman of Future Stores

Ariel Haroush showcasing Future Stores on London’s Oxford Street

Ariel joined a panel about retail renaissance and transforming physical stores into experience-driven platforms. Riffing on earlier panels and the priority to attract the new young consumers that live in the moment, he opened with a story about his young son that perfectly captured customers of the future. Driving along, Ariel’s son asked him to change the song. Ariel answered that they were listening to the radio, but his son insisted on skipping the song again, and Ariel had to explain the concept of live radio.  

Understanding the need to grasp shoppers’ attention in milliseconds, Ariel explained his immersive retail media store concept, Future Stores, which opened on London’s Oxford Street this month. Inspired by the billboard that comes to life in Back to the Future, the stores blend media, retail and digital performance marketing with LEDs covering 400 sqm of wall and ceiling space at Oxford Street, their second location after New York. 

Designed to host brands for no more than two to three weeks, Ariel explained that it was about “conversion and curation,” turning retail into something more like your social feed. The store optimises itself with data and can change the messaging according to the colours and branding that customers respond best to. “The store itself is a living thing based on what’s happening in the data”, he said.

One of Jayne’s key takeaways was that by connecting and working together across industries and sectors, innovation thrives through a shared sense of purpose. The next big chance for the industry to connect is coming up at MAPIC. So, get in touch if you want to schedule a meeting or request a demo to see what Retail Advantage can do for your data, analytics and innovation strategy. 

See our top tips to optimise your retail destination’s digital strategy and de-clutter where necessary.

1. Think accessibility  

It’s important to make sure that you are getting the most out of the data you collect and that it delivers value to the people and brand partners working across your retail destination. 

Reviewing the data different partners and teams can access may help de-clutter hurdles that make the analytics less timely and the insights less actionable. 

Data can be very siloed, so through Retail Advantage, we structure data to be consistent. This way, analytics are presented dynamically to different teams, but still working to the same defined standards. This is essential for a portfolio of centres, but it is equally important for individual retail and leisure destinations so that different teams can access the data in real-time. 

2. Prioritise accuracy 

It is no surprise that destinations thrive on accuracy. It is essential to have the most reliable data you can. If you don’t have accurate data then you are making decisions based upon anecdotal information or simply guessing. Data gets old quickly, so it is essential to swiftly collect, incorporate checks and connect the right data points. Understanding the truth about your traffic and the impact of campaigns and other influences gives you the accuracy to target sales and increase performance. 

3. Be active 

Data only drives impact when you use the learnings.  Whether you are measuring the performance of a destination, street or store, get active about what you are measuring and what you aren’t and why. When building a picture of what is happening at a retail or leisure location, it is good to ask:

• What questions does the data answer? 
• What else would you like to know and are there any information gaps? 
• How can you add value for brand partners with a data sharing strategy that helps support shared goals? 

Looking for a digital de-clutter and support with your data strategy? Get in touch or meet us at Completely Retail Marketplace in London on 27 September 2022. If you are attending, we would be delighted to share our experience and demonstrate Retail Advantage at our Stand 114. 

Of course this applies to so much beyond the retail and leisure industry. But focussing thought and effort on what can help us as we move forward, actually presents us with a unique opportunity. Destination teams, landlords and those trading in our city streets and shopping environments will have had time to reflect on what they need and want from their retail and leisure spaces. The same is true of the shopping public, who have also been evaluating what they need when visiting these places. Do both visions of what real-world retail should look like, align? 

In the April issue of RLI, ART’s director Gareth Jordan shared steps to cultivate community and spark a cultural reboot ready for the new retail world.

Read the Retail Insight here

Indeed, both experiential and community-driven retail environments require in-person activation to bring them to life, and the current situation is reinforcing these strategies for retail’s road to rebirth post-pandemic.  

Seemingly ahead of the trend when it comes to data, Designer Outlets and off-price retail locations have long relied on retail intelligence to work closely with their tenants with turnover-based leases and collective access to a comprehensive view of data.

At this crucial moment, landlords, asset managers and their tenants are having to work much more closely to get results. Performance-linked rents encourage a new type of community, one with connected partners working together to achieve the best performance fuelled by up-to-date information – A new connected retail.

Beyond the outlet sector, we are seeing more store lease agreements adapting this way which is a positive move. Owners with a true understanding of their occupiers can work smarter to deliver a clearer strategy that benefits both tenants, and their customers.   

Technology can aid the transformation of the owner and occupier relationship, helping to make it more collaborative.

Engaging and informative community tools that incorporate crucial communications (from pandemic assistance documents to changes in regulations) are naturally a key focus right now, but social shopping and tools to accurately measure initiatives and experiences will set real-world retail destinations apart post-COVID.

Even during the pandemic, there are opportunities to build a more effective and measurable way to acquire customers. Analytics have helped our clients immediately identify and nurture successful categories such as food-to-go, homeware and athleisure, as well as informing strategies to support those in need of assistance.  

The new retail is not about adding a draw for consumers through short-lived distractions. instead, it is a long road that starts now to inspire authentic community-driven mixed-use retail environments. 

Get in touch to discuss the architecture we can help you implement for a new, collaborative retail