“Whenever, wherever, and at my price point” is the new consumer mantra and the reality for every retailer. Retail aggressors and disrupters, such as Amazon and Shopify, will continue to grow, expand, and play an instrumental role in changing consumer expectations and shopping patterns. Retailers that do not adapt will cease to exist.

Technology is playing a major role in the fundamental transformation in how companies and consumers interact with retail businesses and the U.S. real estate infrastructure that supports them, leading to unprecedented delivery speeds and a proliferation of fulfillment models. In this paper we analyze how advances like e-commerce, cloud computing, machine learning, and robotics are transforming the retail and third-party logistics sectors. In addition, we examine the implications of these shifts for real estate operators like ourselves as well as investment strategies that harness demand-side trends like multi-node warehouse networks and changing shopping center uses.