Welcome back to Shape What Britain Buys, our (now) annualised look at the emerging trends to help you to maximise the retail media opportunity for the year ahead.
In our previous edition, which you can read here, we looked into five opportunities that we felt every consumer brand needed to have on its radar. From Connected Commerce through to Results Beyond ROAS, Shape What Britain Buys 2024 served as an all-in-one guide to some of the year’s biggest retail-centric trends—and how forward-thinking brands could use them to their advantage.
12 months on, and after another year of immense change, we’re back with another set of themes. Some are new, whilst others build on the foundations laid down in our last report. But they’re all united by one thing: the chance to rethink existing norms and find better ways and better answers. To use insight and intelligence to genuinely—and positively—Shape What Britain Buys.
Tash Whitmey
Managing Director,
Tesco Media and Insight Platform
The six trends.
1. Brands bounce back
As consumer confidence recovers, national brands will have the chance to reposition themselves with shoppers.
2. Smaller gets smarter
With challenger brands adopting “big brand” marketing tactics, data will play a defining role in their success.
3. Convenience +
A new era of convenience dawns—and with it the chance to meet shopper needs in a very different way.
4. Blended goes big
For many shoppers, online research is now an essential precursor to in-store shopping—giving brands new ways to engage and inspire.
5. Measurement matures
Tailored metrics, long-term value, and cross-industry standardisation. We believe that this is the year that retail media measurement will come of age.
6. Integration accelerates
From a line item on a plan to an integral part of any brand’s growth strategy. Retail media is becoming more integrated than ever.
Setting the scene.
Today, six trends are shaping what Britain buys… but what’s shaping them? Before we get into the detail, let’s take a quick look at a few of the macro trends setting the tone for 2025.
Growth.
Economic growth is on the agenda for 2025. The OECD has revised its forecast for UK growth upwards to 1.7%1, citing increased government spending as a major driver.
Recovery.
UK food inflation has fallen from 5% in February 20242. In line with that, consumer confidence continues to improve—rising 5pts between 2023 and 20243.
Choice.
Customers are making increasingly conscious choices. 85% are focused on value for money, 50% will buy eco-friendly products when available, and 13% now follow a flexitarian diet4.
1 OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2024 Issue 2 - The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2 United Kingdom Food Inflation – Trading Economics 3 United Kingdom Consumer Confidence – Trading Economics 4 Tesco Media Consumption Panel - December 2024, n=5,689
Bridging the gap.
Looking back on 2024
Emerging megatrends don’t always play nice when it comes to the calendar year. Because of that, while some of the themes we picked out in the 2024 edition of Shape What Britain Buys exploded into life last year, others are still developing. For instance, significant progress was made across Blended Shopping, the Connected Store, and Results Beyond ROAS. On the other hand, Continuous Commerce and Retail Media Teams have undoubtedly progressed over the past 12 months—just not quite at the pace we had anticipated. Regardless of the speed at which they happen to be moving, though, all five of our 2024 themes continue to be evolutionary trends that we believe will shape the market for years to come.
Brands bounce back.
Financially speaking, it’s been a challenging few years for Britain’s shoppers. With inflation forcing tough decisions at the tills, we’ve seen an increase in switching behaviour. Nothing lasts forever of course, and now we’re seeing a steady recovery in the fortunes of national brands. Take November 2024, for instance. On average, Tesco shoppers bought 7.7m more branded items per week that month than they did in November 2023. With economic pressures gradually beginning to ease, it’s clear that brands now have a chance to win back the customers they may have lost over the past few years. To do so, they’ll need to position themselves effectively against the competition. The winners are likely to be the brands that lean into distinctive attributes like quality, performance, taste, innovation, and even humour.
There’s another important factor to bear in mind here, and that’s the role of retail media. Data from Tesco’s Media Consumption Panel5 shows that In-Store, Onsite, and Experiential channels all have an outstated impact on the discovery of new brands and products. Customers are actively seeking those goods out, too: search volumes for Tesco.com’s top 20 brands grew by 12% on average in 2024, with the impulse, grocery, and household categories amongst the standouts.
Growth in leading brand search terms (2024 vs. 2023, YTD November)
5 November 2024
Turn the trend to your advantage.
At a time when brands have the chance to re-engage shoppers, retail media is also reaching a new level of maturity in terms of its brand-building capabilities. With video and rich media experiences now increasingly commonplace (both in-store and online), marketers should be thinking about how best to use them. Focusing on reach (particularly amongst light consumers of traditional media) and frequency (amongst heavier consumers) should be a priority. Differentiation will be critical, too. Brand, Shopper, and eCommerce teams should zero in on their brand’s USPs and amplify them across the retail media mix. Brand tracking—using a test-and-control methodology—should also be used to ascertain the impact on core metrics. This will help those teams to establish the most important drivers of consideration, alongside baseline factors like pricing, range, and distribution dynamics.
We are really encouraged by the positive signs in customer demand increasing for brands which is driving a competitive landscape. Where appropriate all our people across media, shopper, and eCommerce are collectively exploring approaches to applying retail media data sets to different marketing and media challenges across acquisition, retention, and reclaiming lapsed buyers.
Ed Sanderson
Head of Media and Planning,
PepsiCo
Smaller gets smarter.
Over the past decade, 75% of CPG growth has been driven by non-leading brands according to McKinsey6. We’ve seen evidence of that at Tesco, too, with smaller brands growing exponentially as a result of solid investments into advertising—going beyond eCommerce and rolling out “big brand”-style activations like those seen below.
Rooted in authenticity, and hitting customer needs that big brands can’t always satisfy, these challengers can typically be identified by two things: ambition that goes beyond their resources, and a genuine desire to evolve their category to the benefit of shoppers. As a result, data is absolutely integral to their efforts. There are a number of reasons for that. Their small scale—and limited awareness—means that identifying the “right” customers is absolutely vital from an advocacy perspective, for example. Smart targeting solutions like propensity modelling, meanwhile, ensure that limited budgets can be used efficiently (with results validated by actual sales data). And better insight into customer needs can help smaller brands deliver on expectations around innovation.
Wild Cosmetics’ Tesco-exclusive range launch. Branded blockers, headers, and banner dividers ran in the 50 Tesco stores where customers are most likely to purchase sustainable products. Supported by wider POS and digital activity, this campaign reached 92% of the prospective online audience.
6 What got us here won’t get us there: A new model for the consumer goods industry – McKinsey, 20th July 2020
Turn the trend to your advantage.
For market leaders and challenger brands alike, data-driven propensity audiences can help to minimise wasted ad spend. As well as indicating how much you can afford to pull away from current “sustain” audiences, propensity modelling can also tell you how far in you can lean towards “growth” audiences. In turn, that should help you to pinpoint a sweet spot for brand and sales activity, from in-aisle to out-of-store. While unique for every brand, that sweet spot ultimately sits somewhere on what we refer to as the “growth opportunity” scale (below).
The “growth opportunity” scale
There are three steps here. First, small brands should go after their highest purchase intent customers using cost-effective conversion activity. Only once sales have started to plateau with this group should they move on, recruiting prospective “in category” buyers. Finally, once a brand shifts from serving the category to proactively growing it, it should be looking to attract those (hard to win, but highly valuable) customers furthest away from the product.
As a challenger brand you're looking for tactical opportunities, which more established brands might not consider to get the most from tighter budgets. It's about honing in on smarter ways of cutting through and showing up in places where your consumers are.
Pippa Murray
Founder of Pip&Nut
Convenience +.
From the weekly “big shop” to the midweek top-up, home delivery through to click and collect, retailers have spent much of the last two decades evolving their offering to meet the changing needs of grocery shoppers. Now, we believe we’re about to hit the next stage of this journey with the rise of rapid delivery offerings like Tesco Whoosh.
Today, convenience stores are still the bedrock of the on-the-go shopping mission. Whether it’s a quick stop for a pint of milk or that lunchtime staple that is the ‘meal deal’, convenience stores remain an omnipresent fixture on the high street for good reason. Tesco alone has over 2,000 convenience stores.
Rapid delivery services, however, play a different role for shoppers. They service more immediate need-states, those that demand the convenience of quick home delivery. Whoosh, for example, has a significantly larger share of younger and family audiences than Tesco.com. Orders on the platform also peak earlier, between 4-6pm (vs. 6-9pm for Tesco.com). We also know that Whoosh is driving incremental ‘visits’ to Tesco, with near-half of purchases coming from new-to-brand customers. For brands that have a presence on rapid delivery platforms, this represents a major opportunity. Critically, it’s one that’s incremental to the convenience store opportunity—one that can help to attract new customers and increase customer spend without eating into an already powerful revenue stream. As shoppers continue to find new ways to purchase products, physical and digital availability is only going to become more important in the context of convenience. Put simply, brands need to make sure that their products are easy to find and easy to buy—across every convenience need state and every shopping platform.
With the rise of immediate convenience shopping, we have adapted Heineken’s retail media strategies to align with evolving demands of consumers in key consumption occasions. As a supplier, the ability to provide customers with the ultimate convenience represents an exciting opportunity to strengthen our relationships through our brands.
Thomas Lishman
eCommerce Customer Manager at Heineken
Turn the trend to your advantage.
Brands have a limited window through which to influence shoppers during immediate need state missions. Being available, present, and, standing out is vital. Tailoring your message to different motivations will give you the relevancy required to cut through. It’s not about shifting focus away from one convenience channel in favour of another, either; it’s about creating a strategy that works universally across them all.
Proof points.
In the UK, on average there’s a convenience store for every 1.9 sq. miles of land. (Source: dunnhumby and Statista). Customers who began using Whoosh in last three months increased their total visits to Tesco by 11%. (Source: Tesco Media internal analysis).
Blended goes big.
In the 2024 edition of Shape What Britain Buys we called out the trend towards “blended shopping”, with shoppers doing research online before buying in-store. New insight from Tesco.com bears that out, with data showing that the appetite for a tailored, multichannel retail experience continues to grow. In the last year alone, for instance, average monthly traffic to Tesco.com has grown by 12%.
Tesco.com site data 2023 - 20247.
In fact—and as shown in the accompanying table—we’ve seen substantial increases across a range of key Tesco.com metrics in the past year. To us, that’s reflective of online’s growing importance to offline routines: price comparisons, offer seeking, inspiration, and the like. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that many shoppers who visit Tesco.com before heading to a store are trying to get the most out of every shop. Three in five say they’re doing research, around two-thirds are looking for inspiration on new brands and products, and more than half are there to check prices and promotions8. Whichever way you split it, shoppers are spending more time each week building their baskets.
For brands, that means there’s an even greater opportunity to influence purchasing decisions long before customers step through the door. As blended shopping continues to mature, the opportunity to create a close relationship with customers only becomes greater. Telling a cohesive story across the whole of the retail ecosystem will be the key to winning long-term loyalty.
7 dh Shop data, Adobe Analytics (FY Nov 22 – Oct 23 vs Nov 23 – Oct 24) 8 dunnhumby Research / Tesco Shopper Thoughts surveys, Oct-Nov 2024
Turn the trend to your advantage.
As the customer journey becomes increasingly nuanced, fuelling greater demand across more need-states, brands must look to leverage these growing behaviours. Whether the aim is to drive buzz and awareness with impactful media around a new product launch, or simply to remain top of mind for the right moment, winning brands will enhance more consumer interactions, enabling them to win with customers beyond price alone.
We’ve recognised that customers are more interested than ever before when it comes to the value household brands can add to their lives beyond price. It is therefore essential for us to ensure that the reasons to believe in our products align to their needs and expectations. We need to deliver the right information, and make sure it is within easy reach throughout their path to purchase- whether this is information around differentiation, sustainability, product education or best practices. This is why we’ve been working closely with Tesco to deliver a best-in-class online ecosystem for those shopping the category that should bring our customers closer for longer.
Abigail Mills
Commercial Excellence Controller at Henkel
Measurement matures.
Retail media has evolved. What was once just a channel is now a dynamic ecosystem that connects brands and shoppers together. But as their investment into that ecosystem grows, brands are rightly demanding the sophisticated tools they need to evaluate and optimise campaign effectiveness. That means that retail media measurement needs to continue to evolve—something that we see happening across a few key areas.
For starters, there’s the shift towards tailored metrics. Brands are increasingly keen to measure outcomes like incremental Return on Advertising Spend (iROAS), market penetration, new shopper acquisition, and cross-channel purchasing, all helpful in understanding the strategic impact of a campaign. Elsewhere, surveys and brand measurement integrations are helping to clarify the implications for upper-funnel metrics like awareness and consideration. Brands are also beginning to prioritise Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) and other longer term indicators. As well as sales, retail media campaigns will increasingly be judged on their ability to support sustainable growth by attracting high-value, repeat customers. Finally, there’s the issue of standardisation to consider. As the retail media ecosystem continues to mature, retailers and brands will need to partner with industry bodies like the IAB and ISBA to reach consensus on what “good” actually looks like. Across CTR, ROAS, iROAS, attribution windows and more, consistent metrics will enable better benchmarking—and smarter investment decisions.
Turn the trend to your advantage.
The future of retail media measurement lies in transparency, integration, advanced tools, and the use of clean rooms to generate actionable insights. Standardised metrics and sophisticated methodologies will give brands the ability to unlock retail media’s full potential—and drive meaningful outcomes and long-term growth.
Integration accelerates.
The fast-moving retail media landscape can be tricky to navigate. Because of that, media agencies have a big role to play in helping their clients walk the right path. And while some agencies have started to build standalone teams around retail media, they often lean heavily towards specialist eCommerce platforms. The risk is that all of their expertise ends up siloed into a niche function.
In the 2024 edition of Shape What Britain Buys, we spoke about the rise of retail media teams—dedicated, cross-functional groups that bring a range of different skillsets to the table. Since then, we’ve seen many media agencies—typically those with clearly defined joint business plans—starting to embed retail media into their upstream planning. That’s testament to the growing realisation that retail media now has relevance to all planning teams, not just those who focus on performance (for instance). Critically, this isn’t just about team structure, though. It’s about data, too. With planners now having greater access to (consistent) shopper and brand insights in self-service platforms like dunnhumby Sphere, they’re also able to get a much better handle on retail media’s role across the funnel. What’s really needed here is a better understanding of media consumption. If agency planners know how shoppers engage with media in a retail setting (and how they behave afterwards), they’ll also know which channels, formats, and value propositions are most likely to resonate. In turn, that demands better insights—and better access to the rich intelligence that first-party retailer data can provide. Ultimately, that means greater integration between agencies and retailers. For brands to get the most out of retail media, omnichannel data will need to be “baked in” to the planning and measurement tools that their agencies use every day.
Turn the trend to your advantage.
From blended shopping to blended planning. Rather than being a single line in the “performance” part of their plans, winning agencies will integrate retail media throughout. Retail media solutions will simply become a foundational part of annual brand planning, audience segmentation, KPI setting, and omnichannel measurement strategies. This will elevate retail media out of a specialist silo—and into the wider plan for brand growth.
At Publicis Media, we act as a key bridge between our retail media partners and key functions on the client side, namely: brand planning, media teams, shopper and digital commerce. In this role we've fully integrated retail media into our planning frameworks, tools and technology, facilitated by direct data integrations with retail media networks and their shopper insight platforms, and via widescale upskilling of planning teams internally. Through this approach retail media is treated as an integral source of planning insight, measurement and audience that underpins full-funnel media planning, in addition to its role as a channel choice.
Ian Black
Head of Retail Media, Publicis
The six takeaways.
Six emerging trends. Six powerful opportunities. In 2025, here’s what you need to focus on if you want to Shape What Britain Buys.
1. Brands bounce back
Work out how retail media can help you reach underrepresented audiences in your media plan.
2. Smaller gets smarter
Pinpoint your growth ‘sweet spot’. It’s key to the creation of sustainable long-term retention and acquisition strategies.
3. Convenience +
Understand the opportunity for your brand in the immediate need state context—without cannibalising other need state missions.
4. Blended goes big
Don’t underestimate the impact that online has on in-store shopping. Establish the role that each plays on your marketing plan.
5. Measurement matures
While retail media measurement will continue to evolve, brands should already be aligning KPIs and objectives to their wider marketing efforts.
6. Integration accelerates
Use retail media data to enhance agency planning practices, and bring different skillsets closer together.