The
Journal.
Retail, seen from South Africa. What the world's shops are learning, and what shops here can take from it. Every figure dated and sourced, written for the person behind the counter.
Articles
Five articles. Each opens with the one figure to remember.
When Price Stops Working: What the World’s Shops Are Learning About Value, and What South Africa Already Knows
Retailers from Paris to Sydney are holding prices, spreading promotions and selling memberships instead of cutting deeper. Two famous names collapsed in the same week in November 2026. The lesson is about what value means when money is tight, and South Africa has data of its own on it.
The Quiet Store Is Winning. What Does That Ask of a South African Shop?
Shoppers arrive tired. Regulators are redrawing the shelf. The stores doing best are the ones that make a visit easier. What is changing on shop floors from Tokyo to Abu Dhabi, and what it opens up for shops in South Africa.
The Shop Is Becoming the Warehouse, the Locker and the Bank. South Africa Got There by a Different Road.
From parcel lockers in Poland to supermarkets that deliver sandwiches in Texas, the physical shop is being turned into the place everything else runs through. South Africa’s spaza shops have been that place for years. What the two roads can teach each other.
Shoppers Use Artificial Intelligence, and Then Check It. What That Asks of Shops in South Africa
Shoppers now ask artificial intelligence what to buy, then check the answer themselves. Retailers are racing to build their own assistants, blocking other people’s, and asking whether the adverts they sell actually sell anything. What the evidence says, and the questions it opens for shops here.
Three Quarters of What a Shop Loses Is Lost Before a Thief Arrives
Hacked freezers in eight countries, baskets half paid for in London, biscuits that vanish from shelves and never return. The risks to a shop in 2026 are mostly invisible from the door. What the world’s retailers have found, and the questions it opens for shops in South Africa.