Indian retail leaders call for experience-led stores to win consumer time and trust
At ETRetail’s ShopFWD Summit 2026, industry executives said physical retail’s next growth cycle will depend on personalised service, entertainment, food, beauty and data-led expansion. Brands, malls and landlords were urged to collaborate more closely to drive repeat visits and longer dwell time.
What happened
ETRetail ShopFWD Summit 2026 · Industry leaders said Indian physical retail must shift from transactions toward experience, personalisation, service and
Key facts
- Day 2
- 4th ETRetail ShopFWD Summit 2026
- retail lease relationships of almost two decades
Why this matters
Target partnerships or acquisitions in retail analytics, experiential activation, food and beauty concepts, and mall-brand collaboration tools that deepen customer engagement.
What to watch
- Sustained increases in mall dwell time, repeat visitation and sales per square foot following experiential upgrades.
- Growth in F&B, beauty service, entertainment and wellness leasing share within major malls and high streets.
- Retailer adoption of unified loyalty, clienteling and mall-level customer data partnerships.
- Lease renewal premiums and occupancy divergence between destination malls and secondary properties.
- Whether event attendance translates into higher conversion, larger baskets and loyalty enrolment within 30 to 90 days.
- Consumer discretionary-spending pressure, which could shift demand toward value retail despite higher experience investment.
- Prioritise store formats where service and discovery can materially raise basket size: beauty, fashion, electronics, home, wellness and premium grocery.
- Build shared landlord-brand footfall dashboards linking events, dwell time, repeat visits, conversion and tenant sales rather than measuring attendance alone.
- Expand F&B, entertainment and wellness adjacencies around retail zones to create evening and weekend demand pools.
- Invest in frontline clienteling, appointment booking, loyalty integration and post-visit CRM before scaling high-cost activations.
- Reprice leases and revenue-share agreements around traffic quality, event calendars and omnichannel fulfilment value, not just gross leasable area.
- Test local community programming and smaller recurring events, which may produce more repeat visitation than occasional celebrity-led activations.