Despite difficult economic times, Customer-centricity remains in the forefront of the minds of both retailers and consumers. Clearly retail laggards (those whose year over year comparable sales performance lags their peers and inflation) are seriously concerned for their own futures, but our data shows that the better a retailer’s past performance, the less it focuses on short-term economic conditions as a business driver.

Perhaps most significantly, retailers look to their employees to help drive customer-centric initiatives. If 2007 was the year of the empowered customer, 2008 is poised to be the year of the empowered employee.