Introduction

Coresight Research is an official research partner of Shoptalk Spring 2025, which took place during March 25–27, 2025, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. Shoptalk Spring is an annual retail conference focusing on the trends, business models and technologies shaping the future of retail.

This year, Shoptalk Spring attracted more than 10,000 attendees for the first time and featured more than 225 speakers and 900 retail technology and solution providers. The event’s meetings program facilitated more than 30,000 curated 15-minute meetings. Shoptalk Spring 2025 also debuted a new stage, “The New Market” stage, and a related track, which focused on retail media and “new media.”

At the event, the Coresight Research team presented at panels, attended conference sessions, met with clients old and new, participated in one-to-one sessions and hosted an executive dinner.

The Coresight Research team at our Shoptalk Spring 2025 Executive Dinner (left to right): John Harmon, Managing Director of Technology Research; Stephan Deemer, Research Team; Anna Beller, Director of Special Projects; Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder; Steven Winnick, Vice President, Innovator Services; Kai Jun Xu, Executive Assistant

Source: Coresight Research

 

In this report, we present our top insights from Shoptalk Spring 2025, centered around five key themes that align with Coresight Research’s predictions for retail in 2025 and beyond:

1. Leading with Unified Commerce and Superior Customer Experiences—Customer hospitality involves unlocking unified commerce, creating welcoming retail experiences and fostering customer loyalty.
2. Creating Value to Succeed in a Crowded Market and Cater to Niche Markets—Today, every retail touchpoint, both online and offline, can be used to build brand storytelling and increase engagement, enabling brands and retailers to communicate the authenticity and clarity that consumers demand.
3. Inspiring Shoppers with Next-Generation Search and GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence)—The traditional search box has been a staple of e-commerce, remaining simple and consistent. However, large language models (LLMs) and chatbots powered by GenAI are now reimagining the ways in which consumers find digital and physical offerings.
4. Enhancing Productivity and Engagement with Advanced Technology—Emerging technologies present huge potential for retail companies to reduce inefficiencies, drive growth, and enhance the shopping experience by better understanding their customers.
5. Innovating the Future of Marketing, Including Through Retail Media—Retail media is reshaping how marketers communicate with customers and is providing retailers with a robust new revenue stream. Brand marketers are also reshaping their strategies as new media creates new modes of storytelling, with consumers’ attention spans shifting and fragmenting.

Figure 1. Key Themes from Shoptalk Spring 2025

Source: Coresight Research

 

Shoptalk Spring 2025 Wrap-Up: Coresight Research Insights

1. Leading with Unified Commerce and Superior Customer Experiences

Pillars of Success in Modern Retail

We view the overarching theme of Shoptalk Spring 2025 as “putting the customer at the center of everything”—this is a necessary return to retail basics, a departure from the distractions of efficiency, technology and profitability for their own sakes. Today, the customer has more and more new channels via which to shop, meaning that retailers must re-emphasize human elements, such as entertainment, community and fun, to attract customers who could easily conduct a transaction online or via another merchant.

Shoptalk Spring 2025’s opening keynote harkened back to past “golden ages” of retail, such as the opening of department stores at the turn of the twentieth century and the height of malls in the 1980s, announcing that we are “standing at the dawn of a new era,” where retailers can use their trove of data to offer more customer-centric services. If companies do not reinvent themselves, they risk fading away, as evidenced by a spate of recent bankruptcy announcements and closures. The recently opened Printemps department store in New York, New York, was cited as a prime example of retail reinvention, with multiple speakers highlighting the store’s focus on experiences over technology. Summarizing the importance of customer centricity, Sophie Wawro, Global President of Shoptalk, commented that “companies need to place people, not products or platforms, at the center” of their strategies.

Loyalty and the Post-Purchase Experience

While there are many ways to earn customer loyalty, the currently ubiquitous points and levels programs seem the least compelling as they amplify the transactional nature of the customer-retailer relationship. There are several other creative ways that retailers can win customer loyalty and set themselves apart from the crowd, such as offering loyalty members unique experiences. ParcelLab’s innovative solution is uniquely compelling: the company offers customers a partial refund in lieu of accepting a return, making customers feel as though they have scored a deal, receiving the product for less than what they originally paid. This enhances loyalty among shoppers, while eliminating a costly return for the retailer.

Christoph Gerber, Co-Founder and CEO at loyalty-program software provider Talon.One discussed the “curse of the post-purchase inbox,” referring to the deluge of emails from retailers that hit every Monday morning. He advocated changing the timing of offers to “make every interaction count” and not burden consumers, as some 30% of promotions drive a negative return on investment, according to Gerber.

Lin Dai, CEO and Co-Founder of experiential inventory and rewards technology provider Superlogic, commented that “experience is the new frontier of loyalty,” while Gina Perrelli, Founder and CEO of subscription management software company Stay AI, stated, “experience is everything” in regard to subscription businesses. By offering simple services, such as providing a customer with the opportunity to pause, rather than cancel, a subscription serves to sustain the customer-retailer relationship, whereas an outright cancelation would end it.

Dai (left) and Gerber (right) discuss customer loyalty at Shoptalk Spring 2025
Source: Shoptalk

 

Human Capital

Humans—and the effect of technology transitions on them—are a key element of technology deployments that can easily be overlooked, causing deployments to fail due to a lack of user input, acceptance or training. This is especially the case in the current transition to AI (artificial intelligence) platforms and AI-powered applications, which require not only training, but the adoption of an entirely new mindset about how to approach problems. With AI talent scarce, enterprises would be well-served by training their existing employees, which also leverages their domain experience. At Shoptalk Spring 2025, the session “Restructuring Digital Teams for a World of Unified Commerce,” discussed how technology transitions and installations affect human employees, touching on many of the topics mentioned above.

Mandeep Bhatia, Senior Vice President of Global Digital Product and Omnichannel Innovation at fashion holding company Tapestry, urged companies to embrace AI, as “teams with AI will beat teams without AI,” noting that AI-powered teams typically receive a 20%–30% boost towards efficiency goals. However, at the same time, panelists noted that companies need to show empathy to employees during technology transitions, as there will undoubtedly be questions and hesitation. Generational changes, corporate succession and individuals’ need for growth paths present additional challenges for real upscaling, according to Vivian Chang, Vice President of E-Commerce at health and nutrition company GNC.

The “Restructuring Digital Teams for a World of Unified Commerce” session, from left to right: Sabrina Cherubini, Senior Vice President of Brand and Digital, Hanky Panky; Bhatia; Chang; and Valerie de Charette, Partner, TOMORROW
Source: Shoptalk

 

2. Creating Value to Succeed in a Crowded Market and Cater to Niche Markets

Intentional Storytelling

Storytelling is an essential element of retail, both in terms of communicating brand identity and convincing consumers that a certain item will improve their life; this is especially the case for luxury or near-luxury items, which must convey the image of a lifestyle that just cannot be recreated with common, lower-priced items. The story transforms the purchase into an experience, rather than a simple transaction.

COS aims to offer luxury positioning, including luxury quality, tailoring and store design, without demanding luxury prices. For instance, the company’s $500-and-below cashmere program is presented as a vehicle for emotional appeal, craftsmanship and longevity, not as a value product. Additionally, COS focuses on TikTok over traditional, overt feature marketing, to communicate its aspirational visuals, curated environments and strong virality. The brand also uses location as a storytelling and marketing tool, occupying premium real estate locations in globally iconic districts, such as the trendy Williamsburg neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York, New York.

Ralph Lauren is utilizing its partnership with textile firm Delta Galil to allow consumers to access the Ralph Lauren lifestyle “without making too much of an investment,” according to Kiera Ganann, Senior Vice President and Global General Manager of Ralph Lauren Brands at Delta Galil. The partnership focuses on emotional storytelling and high-touch presentations—rather than logo-centric luxury—to reinforce Ralph Lauren’s position as a timeless, aspirational and inclusive brand.

Ganann (left) and Katie Reeves, Managing Director, North America, COS (right), discuss the importance of emotional storytelling
Source: Shoptalk

 

Brand Values

Goodwill’s panel was impressive on two fronts, as it clearly articulated both the company’s mission to help those in need and how it leverages leading-edge technology. Goodwill excels at being both a retailer and a nonprofit—the company has become the “largest charity in the US for workforce development,” working to bring dignity to people the economy has “forgotten,” such as those with a disability or without homes, according to Matt Kaness, CEO of GoodwillFinds Ecommerce. On the retail side, the retailer is currently benefiting from the growing interest in both sustainability and resale. Goodwill also employs GenAI (generative AI) to keep costs low, managing its e-commerce efforts with little more than a skeleton team. The combination of lean expenses and its ability to address a nationwide audience for its online goods, enabling it to secure market-based prices, allows the organization to pass maximum value on to its stakeholders.

Kaness discusses brand values
Source: Shoptalk

 

Community-Oriented Brand Building

Phrases we heard frequently at Shoptalk Spring were around gaining “mindshare,” “rising above the noise” and meeting customers “where they are.” These phrases all refer to retailers and brands distilling their brand message to differentiate themselves from their competitors, which often includes creating communities that consumers can be a part of. Communities create a sense of belonging, and we heard from retailers that are working to create communities via social media platforms, the metaverse and even computer gaming groups.

For instance, on the final day of Shoptalk Spring 2025, Adeela Hussain Johnson, CEO of travel gear and accessories brand BÉIS, delivered a keynote diving into the ways in which her brand maintains its focus on deeply understanding its customers and responding with targeted innovation, helping it rise above in a crowded market. Though the company’s core demographic is 24–45-year-old females, it constantly engages with new cohorts, including older shoppers and men. When interacting with its shoppers, the brand relies on paid channels such as Instagram and other social platforms to drive engagement and build community. While modern retailers must strive to meet customers wherever they are, they also need to ensure that each interaction reinforces their core values and brand identity.

Hussain Johnson discusses brand values and community building
Source: Shoptalk

 

3. Inspiring with Next-Generation Search and GenAI

A Gamut of Tech, Yet Caution Remains

We are on the cusp of two major technology trends: GenAI-powered search and agentic AI. Search has historically been limited by the quality of the keywords assigned to products, with customers unable to find products that were incorrectly or inadequately tagged with relevant keywords. GenAI-powered semantic search uses the technology’s facility with language to understand what the customer is actually seeking. Moreover, GenAI can access unstructured data, such as data from social media, to stay up-to-date on recent trends, further helping customers discover the exact product they are looking for. Agentic AI, on the other hand, can take action on behalf of the consumer. While this technology is still in its early stages, there have already been successful deployments in areas including customer service, with agents automatically handling the majority of customer requests.

Still, the gamut of technology now available to retailers does not come without caution. The session “Rapid Fire: Retail Technologies that Rock” discussed how retailers are proceeding with caution in regard to technology adoption, especially AI adoption, due to risks surrounding customer trust, data ownership and brand reputation, which could pose a substantial liability for them.

Padma Hari, Chief Digital Officer at Nestlé Purina PetCare, commented that, while GenAI “did not work for content generation” for the brand, language-based and visual search are gaining traction as they solve specific discovery challenges, especially in categories where it is difficult for customers to specify their exact needs. Additionally, panelists viewed emerging agentic AI technology as one that would need significant human oversight and stated that there is a need for a delicate balance when it comes to personalization: too little results in generic marketing, yet too much can be “creepy.”

The “Rapid Fire: Retail Technologies that Rock” session, from left to right: Hari; Fiona Tan, Chief Technology Officer, Wayfair; Ron Ijack, Chief Technology Officer, Knix; and Anne Mezzenga, Co-CEO, Omni Talk Retail
Source: Shoptalk

 

Gen AI for Discovery and Inspiration in Beauty and Luxury

GenAI is being deployed on several fronts across various industries, including directly and through applications that control it. Companies are not just using the technology to help customers find the products they desire, but also to offer customers emotional, intuitive and curated experiences.

Sapna Parikh, Chief Digital Officer at Kendo Brands (LVMH), explained that discovery in beauty is deeply tied to an emotional connection. As such, LVMH is using GenAI to enhance its emotional storytelling and tailor product suggestions to customers’ moods, routines and aesthetics. Similarly, Alexis Hoopes, Vice President of Global Fashion at eBay, discussed how the company is using behavioral data and AI modeling to transition search away from static keywords and toward identity-driven inspiration, “helping users explore style identities. The retailer’s role is to connect consumers with stories, not just SKUs (stock-keeping units).”

In the same session, Elizabeth Garry, Vice President of E-Commerce at Pandora Jewelry, stressed the importance of consistent personalization across digital and physical platforms: “We want discovery to feel seamless and familiar. That means using data to remember preferences and suggest meaningful pieces, not just new ones.” Meanwhile, Patrick Buchanan, Senior Vice President of Marketing at fashion brand Lulus, stated that his company takes an integrated approach, leveraging content, creators and commerce to create a feedback loop that continually drives discovery and conversion and leads to “inspiration at every touchpoint—Instagram, search, PDPs (product description pages), email; it all works together.”

Left to right: Parikh; Hoopes; Garry; Buchanan; and Lindsey Mazza, Global Retail Lead, Capgemini
Source: Shoptalk

 

AI for Customer Engagement

In the roughly two and a half years since the invention of GenAI, the technology has spawned intelligent chatbots; new ways to create text, audio and video; new models for search; and innovative ways to engage with consumers. We were impressed to see the presence of GenAI-first companies at Shoptalk Spring 2025, firms that use the technology to create brand-new business models, utilizing the technology to analyze data and suggest ways to better engage with customers. The session “AI and Data Solutions Enhancing Customer Interactions” featured presentations from four companies that currently offer GenAI-powered solutions to retailers and brands.

• Cimulate has created an “LLM (large language model)-based operating system” to improve the customer experience, beginning with search. The company also uses LLMs to generate an unlimited number of synthetic customer profiles, which it states align closely with real consumer profiles.
• Nectar Social offers a platform that uses GenAI to help brands insert themselves into conversations on social media. It identifies social media posts where brands can proactively offer comments and generate engagement with consumers by asking questions; the platform also analyzes community feedback for content and product improvements.
• Postscript offers an LLM-based solution titled “Shopper,” which can hold conversations with customers via text message, with the conversation adapting and responding to a customer’s replies. These personalized conversations reportedly increase the conversation rate over ordinary text-message offers.
• Topsort uses GenAI to bring standardization to the fragmented retail media landscape, leveraging retailers’ first-party data to enhance the monetization of retail media inventory.

From left to right: Misbah Uraizee, CEO and Founder, Nectar Social; Regina Ye, Co-Founder and CEO, Topsort; Adam Turner, Co-Founder and CEO, Postscript; Vivek Farias, Co-Founder and CTO, Cimulate; Vanessa Larco, Partner, NEA
Source: Shoptalk

 

4. Enhancing Productivity and Engagement with Advanced Technology

Influencers and Stories That Resonate

Influencers, through their extensive reach, serve a key role in repeating and amplifying a brand’s story to consumers. As such, leading retailers are engaging with influencers to craft engaging stories, rather than one-off posts that are easily ignored. Panelists from Meta, Sephora and WHP Global highlighted the essential role of storytelling in creating unified, modern experiences while simultaneously keeping established names relevant and attractive to new audiences.

• Toys “R” Us, owned by WHP Global, has reinvigorated its image by updating memorable elements—such as its theme song—in fresh formats.
• Celessa Baker, Vice President of Marketing Partnerships at Sephora, stated that the beauty retailer looks to create entire stories, “not just moments,” when it works with influencers, in order to create campaigns that resonate with customers. For instance, earlier this year, Sephora gave pop star Chappell Roan free reign to “tell her beauty story,” in which she described how makeup shaped who she is today.
• Karin Tracy, Group Lead of Retail and E-Commerce at Meta, commented, “Great storytelling does not exist without great creativity…Creativity is the greatest lever for performance gains,” outlining the need for brands to develop new content formats and platforms to address diverse segments.

Left to right: Kim Miller, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Toys “R” US, WHP Global; Baker; Tracy; Donna Sharp, Partner, UTA, and Managing Director, MediaLink
Source: Shoptalk

 

Commerce Intelligence

Retailers and brands possess a wealth of valuable proprietary data on their customers, and that data can unlock a trove of insights on customer behavior, including their habits and spending patterns, which can then be used to create new products and enhance the shopping experience—a theme we heard again and again at Shoptalk Spring 2025.

In particular, location analytics provider Placer.ai collects a wealth of data on consumers: where they eat, sleep, work and shop, generating insights on shopper behavior both inside and outside of retail locations. At this year’s event, Placer.ai’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Ethan Chernofsky, stressed the importance of the store experience in enhancing customer satisfaction, with stores now serving multiple functions outside of data collection, including acting as fulfillment centers, experience hubs and media platforms.

Georgina Nelson, Founder and CEO of TruRating, which uses point-of-sale (POS) data to unlock deep insights into spending levels, loyalty and conversion rates, commented that the main drivers of revenue growth and customer loyalty are friendly service, price competitiveness and product quality, according to data from in-store shoppers. She advised retailers to evaluate stores individually, optimize KPIs (key performance indicators) that can influence staff behavior and leverage technology to free up staff to have meaningful interactions with customers.

Nelson discusses key drivers of customer loyalty in modern retail
Source: Shoptalk

 

Later, Rachel Tipograph, Founder and CEO of e-commerce analytics and enablement software company MikMak—which reported that it engaged with some 1.5 billion shoppers in 2024—characterized the company as part of the “commerce intelligence era,” in which real-time consumer data shapes brand strategy. She stressed that brands must be commerce-first and data-driven to handle inflation, price sensitivity and shifting shopper behavior.

Data-Enabled Personalization

Cross-border e-commerce platform Shein has taken data-driven product design and customer collaboration to a new level, incorporating user data when creating small-batch test items. The company also uses data on user preferences to enhance the shopping experience, offering product recommendations and personalization options for certain items. The company’s Head of Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Peter Pernot-Day, described Shein’s “tailored tech” strategy, which allows the customer to steer product development via the data they provide: design ideas come to the company via street styles or customer opportunities, and Shein then produces 100–200 units to test the product. If the product shows promise and demand materializes, Shein ramps up manufacturing rapidly, minimizing waste while maximizing choice. Feedback is collected by a dynamic app that personalizes the shopping experience through image-centric discovery, AI-powered search and gamified browsing, according to Pernot-Day.

Pernot-Day explains Shein’s “tailored tech” strategy
Source: Shoptalk

 

We heard similar remarks from SharkNinja, which listens to customer feedback during the product development stage, and General Electrics, which uses feedback to hone the development of its appliances during development.

5. Innovating the Future of Marketing, Including Through Retail Media

Commerce Media to Enhance the Shopping Experience

While, at last year’s event, “The New Market” track was described as a retail media track, the organizers expanded its scope this year to include other media that can reach consumers, including retailer apps, payment apps, social shopping, video games, and old and new forms of TV alike. During Shoptalk Spring 2025, we found Sam’s Club’s use of its Scan and Go app as a medium for messaging and PayPal’s entrance into the retail media market, with its presence in front of consumers, both particularly novel.

• One panel on The New Market stage dove into the idea of “commerce media,” with Harvey Ma, Vice President and General Manager of Member Access Platform at Sam’s Club, commenting that “not all ads look like ads,” meaning that screens can simply remind customers to purchase an item that they have shown interest in. As a warehouse club, Sam’s Club possesses an incredible amount of data on its customers. Additionally, its stores are already packed with screens, and customers also use its Scan and Go app via their smartphones, which allows the company to offer true personalization via individual deals and messages. However, despite this broad deployment of technology, Sam’s Club also seeks to offer non-technology experiences, such as exclusive outdoor events, to enhance its members’ shopping experience further.
• We heard from PayPal about how it is in the early stages of launching its own retail media network (RMN) via its smartphone app. Jenna Griffith, Vice President of PayPal Ads, emphasized the importance of value, trust, experience and assortment in RMNs.

From left to right: Griffith; Ma; Aaron Dunford, Vice President of Media at Nordstrom; and Amy Andrews, President of Mars United Commerce
Source: Shoptalk

 

The Ongoing Importance of Video

We view shoppable video as a growing powerhouse in retail, particularly as younger generations are increasingly becoming video-first shoppers, a trend that will only increase as their spending power increases. While the urgency and immediacy of short videos pose a serious challenge to long-form media, TV remains a powerful medium due to its ubiquity and large screens. Meanwhile, various companies now have significant opportunities in the shoppable video space: Amazon possesses TV-related hardware, its own programming and an e-commerce marketplace; Roku possesses both set-top hardware and its own content, which it can make shoppable; and Walmart recently acquired television and software designer Vizio, providing it with similar benefits.

The General Manager of US Commerce, Global Business Solutions at TikTok, Amy Oelkers, stressed that TikTok thinks of itself as an entertainment platform first, before thinking of itself as a social media or shopping platform. Still, TikTok remains a robust platform for product search, with four-fifths of its users discovering a new product through a creator and 45% of those users then searching the platform to learn more about that product, according to Oelkers. She also stated that TikTok will lean into live shopping, as it is the “perfect platform” for e-commerce discovery.

Both Julie Haleluk, Global Head of Growth for Amazon Shopping Video at Amazon, and Brian Toombs, Head of Roku Brand Studio at Roku, talked about the importance of meeting customers where they are and offering valuable content. Meanwhile, Haleluk emphasized the need for authenticity from creators to generate effective consumer engagement. She also stated that Amazon’s video platform plans to provide more product information to viewers, which could help mitigate the $1 trillion of returns expected this year.

Oelkers (left) discusses TikTok’s positioning as an entertainment platform with Lauren Lavin, Executive Director, Commerce for GroupM NA at GroupM (right)
Source: Shoptalk

 

Fans’ Role in Defining Brands

Consumer participation was a recurring theme throughout Shoptalk Spring and it is a clever mechanism to generate customer engagement and loyalty. We heard several examples of customer feedback playing a major role in brands’ and retailers’ product development processes, making new products more successful and reducing issues such as returns and waste.

• Denise Truelove, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PC Marketing at PepsiCo Foods North America, commented that retailers are bringing fans into the conversation in terms of the products they want and the marketing they desire, rather than simply tracking demographics or reacting to short-term trends.
• Chinese Laundry’s Chief Marketing Officer, Sarah Zurell, stressed the importance of personal connections in marketing, commenting, “We are always looking to ‘create moments’ where the customers have an emotional response.” she said, offering examples such as customers aspiring to be the people featured in advertising campaigns or connecting with a social post by an influencer that the company is working with.

What We Think

The Coresight Research Point of View on AI

Our high-level view that AI excels in finding relationships among large amounts of data still rings true, whether that data is numerical, text, audio, images or snippets of computer code. AI/ML (machine learning) also excels at optimizing quantitative data complex processes and powers essential functions such as demand forecasting, inventory optimization and pricing. The need for retailers to adopt a robust, structured, automated platform for managing operations is becoming increasingly urgent due to global competition and challenges, as well as fast-changing customer demands.

GenAI, specifically, excels at analyzing and creating numerical data, text, audio, video, computer code and synthetic data, and its capabilities extend well beyond creating intelligent chatbots and summarizing text. Its natural-language interface democratizes the use of AI, enabling everyone to “ask questions of their data” in normal human language, and its enormous flexibility allows GenAI to be applied to new and dynamic applications. Additionally, GenAI’s ability to generate text based on consumer data promises to achieve the long-sought-after personalization at scale, with retailers and brands able to offer highly personalized webpages, emails and conversations that finally put an end to impersonal communication.

GenAI, which remains in its early stages, continues to improve, with developers adding reasoning engines that perform reasonableness tests and new lower-cost language models have emerged that democratize the use of GenAI.

We are in the early stages of the next AI revolution—agentic AI—in which agents are able to act on behalf of humans, even proactively. Agents build on GenAI technology, using natural language to understand what tasks need to be carried out. In the future, agent-to-agent interaction could expand the benefits of agents multiplicatively.

Implications from This Report

The Shoptalk Spring conference seeks to outline the future of retail, and this year’s show was a mix of the latest advanced technologies, combined with success stories stemming from basic retailing, such as retailers and brands achieving success via a renewed focus on brand values and their core customers. Shoptalk Spring 2025 largely focused on going “back to basics,” i.e., advocating a return to customer centricity, as modern customers are fickle, given the low barriers between platforms.

We also heard several variations on the theme “shopping is entertainment,” underscoring the need for retailers and brands to create positive, engaging experiences, providing shoppers with a reason not to simply seek the cheapest transaction. Rather, shoppers seek “value,” which can be a low price, a friendly salesperson or a premium product that provides an emotional experience. This throughline was perhaps best summed up by Shoptalk’s Global President, Sophie Wawro, who stated: “Consumers don’t just buy products, they buy experiences.”

The New Market was a novel addition to the conference. Although it was introduced last year as a retail media track, this year, it encompassed many types of media: traditional TV, streaming and connected TVs, the metaverse, social media and even computer gaming. Companies across the retail space are leveraging these new forms of media to create communities around their brands, giving consumers a place to go and meet like-minded shoppers.

Implications for Brands/Retailers

• The conference’s over-arching theme was clear: companies need to reignite an obsessive focus on their customers, who now have access to numerous other shopping channels that entertain them and offer compelling experiences.
• Several retailers cited “mindshare” as the key ingredient to win in a crowded retail market, meaning that maintaining customer centricity can keep a brand or retailer first in their customers’ minds.
• Communities are another way to stay close to consumers—building communities can involve bringing customers into the product development process, having quick-response teams on social media or using technologies and tools that help companies better engage with customers.

Implications for Technology Vendors

• There is an opportunity for technology vendors to offer customer-centric products to retailers and brands, including associate enablement tools, software for personalization and personalized communication, and tools that help companies create communities and offer engaging experiences to consumers.
• The physical store remains a significant opportunity for technology deployment. For example, associates with GenAI-enabled mobile devices can offer product information and personalized recommendations to customers, even on their first day on the job.
• The current technology landscape is a “Tower of Babel,” with an army of enterprise solutions, mid-range solutions and startups all vying for retailers’ attention and dollars. As such, retailers are increasingly looking for comprehensive, integrated, open solutions to reduce their vendor count.

Impacts from AI

• AI was not the hottest theme at Shoptalk Spring 2025, revealing that AI has transitioned from being a buzzword to a tool that retailers and brands are evaluating and implementing to enhance their businesses.
• Agentic AI was rarely mentioned at this year’s event, as the technology is still being refined, and the tools for its deployment are still being perfected.

Notes

Data in this report are as of April 7, 2025.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Amazon.com, Inc. (NasdaqGS: AMZN), BÉIS, Chinese Laundry (a division of Cels Brands), Cimulate, COS, Delta Galil Industries Ltd. (TASE: DELG), eBay Inc. (NasdaqGS: EBAY), GNC Holdings, Inc., General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), GoodwillFinds Ecommerce, Kendo Brands (a division of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, Société Européenne (ENXTPA: MC)), Lulus, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NasdaqGS: META), MikMak, Nectar Social, Nestlé S.A. (SWX: NESN), Purina PetCare, Pandora Jewelry, LLC, PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqGS: PYPL), PepsiCo, Inc. (NasdaqGS: PEP), Placer.ai, Postscript, Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE: RL), Roku, Inc. (NasdaqGS: ROKU), Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Sephora USA, Inc., SharkNinja, Shein, Superlogic, Talon.One, Tapestry, Inc. (NYSE: TPR), TikTok Inc., Topsort, Toys “R” Us (a division of WHP Global), TruRating