Retailer Data Fuels Growth and Omnichannel Customer Experiences

Explosive growth of retail media

The undeniable catalyst for the explosive growth of retail media was the pandemic. COVID-19 forced shoppers online, shuttering physical stores and creating a digital gold rush. Retail media is now an essential tool for brands to connect meaningfully with consumers and to help them navigate to the products that are right for them. By tapping into the wealth of data and insight from retailers first party data, brands are delivering targeted and relevant advertising that directly drives business growth.

Brand Impact

The industry is fascinating thanks to the abundance of consumer data that retailers now possess. A customer's basket reveals more than just their purchases; it tells a story. New parent? Recent promotion? Embarking on a health kick? These life changes are reflected in their buying habits. The power of combining retailer data with geo accuracy means that cookie deprecation (if it happens!) shouldn’t hold marketers back. At T&Pm, we obsess with improving business outcomes for our clients through our Performance Mindset, which applies incrementality experimentation methods through the funnel for maximised ROI. For driving incremental sales, retailer data is essential. It provides the accurate insights needed to measure our omnichannel impact and ensure lower-funnel tactics are focused on new growth, not just converting existing demand.

We're seeing brands extend their use of first-party retailer data “offsite” and to upper-funnel channels like CTV and DOOH, activating valuable shopper insights for greater reach. Shoppable TV and livestream shopping, with time, will become more widely adopted and emerge as established subchannels of the retail media space. Additionally, retailers will begin to incorporate these engaging formats onto their platform which opens more content and partnership opportunities. This is a game-changer for non-endemic brands who can now use retailer platforms and their data to reach audiences in new ways. Retail and commerce media have moved beyond a standalone tactic and are now integrated into the whole consumer brand experience.

We're developing advanced audience segmentation and targeting strategies—based on customer value and purchase propensity—to drive incremental growth beyond organic demand. These segments are activated across all marketing channels, from CTV to sponsored listings. The richness of retailer and shopper data that we draw upon to do this has step-changed our brand strategy and planning, ensuring media investment is even more accountable to our clients’ business outcomes.

Improving the customer journey

AI fuelled by CX data will deliver the next level of personalisation. One example of this is the AI-powered chatbot, which provides customers with quick and efficient support, while also shining a light on where brands can further personalise to individual needs and challenges.

CX data can also help brands understand how people interact with products and services. By analysing customer feedback and behaviour, brands can adapt and innovate to exceed customer expectations. There are already some interesting innovators in this space already, such as Nibble, which allows visitors to negotiate the price of an item with AI - reminiscent of haggling at a market stall. It will be fascinating to see how generative AI and improvements in augmented reality will change the digital shopping experience, potentially making it more desirable than in-person.

Overall, I believe that the marriage of AI and customer data holds an unprecedented opportunity for improving the customer experience and we are only beginning to scratch the surface of its potential.

Evolving traditional retail

To remain relevant in a digital world, brick and mortar locations need to adapt and evolve. We believe that creating a seamless omnichannel experience is now a matter of hygiene, and we help clients create connected commerce strategies. Increasingly, digital behaviours are being used to help customers navigate offline for greater personalisation. Today retailers can only create the cohesive customer journeys that are expected of them by meshing physical and digital worlds.

Physical stores will always maintain the advantage of being able to offer a tactile and sensory experience. However, as the advancements in technology and AI develop, we would expect AR, VR, voice and gesture control to become more commonplace in physical environments.

There is a blurring of the lines between physical and digital and so we encourage clients to focus on creating an inviting atmosphere, offering personalised service, and providing unique in-store experiences that leave a lasting impression. Overall, the key to remaining relevant in a digital world is to embrace technology while cultivating the unique advantages of a physical location.

Personalisation at Scale: By analysing user data and behaviour, GenUI can create unique interfaces that cater to individual needs, preferences and the task at hand. Experiences will become more universally accessible by understanding and reacting to disabilities or situational needs.

Enhanced Engagement: GenUI’s adaptability keeps users engaged by presenting them with convenient interfaces, highly relevant content and options in real time, reducing friction and making interactions more intuitive.

Efficiency & Productivity: For businesses, GenUI can streamline workflows and improve productivity by anticipating user needs, automating repetitive tasks, and providing intelligent recommendations.

GenUI has become a reality through the latest ChatGPT4o technology. With natural language processing capabilities and multimodal interactions handling text, voice and visual inputs, it can integrate with existing products through APIs. It also has benefits such as error handling, continuous feedback and robust security features that make GenUI user-friendly, reliable and intuitive.

We’re starting to harness its abilities and show how it can benefit our clients' products and internal processes, with early designs showing a lot of promise (and a somewhat scary future!). It can be quite unnerving as a product team to think about all of this in reality, so your approach should be strategic and well thought through.

We’ve established some early best practices and approaches for making sure you spot the right opportunity and strategically implement GenUI designs.