INTERVIEW: Designing Retail Media for Scale and Relevance: Helene Trad on Kingfisher’s Approach
Helene Trad, head of retail media at Kingfisher, explained at Retail MediaX Europe how the group is building a modular, customer‑centric retail media platform that serves both trade‑focused Screwfix and inspiration‑driven B&Q. The strategy blends a unified measurement backbone with banner‑specific activation layers and relies on AI for planning, workflow automation and brand‑safe creative review. Trad stressed the importance of listening to shopper feedback to avoid ad overload and highlighted trade customers as high‑value, long‑term audiences. Suppliers now view retail media as a strategic growth lever rather than a peripheral channel.
The Twin Regulation Test Facing UK Subscription Retailers
UK subscription retailers face a dual regulatory hurdle in 2026 as the EU enacts a “one‑click return” right of withdrawal on 19 June and the UK rolls out its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Both regimes demand that cancellation be...
Claire’s Shuts All 154 UK and Ireland Stores
Claire’s has shuttered all 154 of its UK and Ireland stores, resulting in roughly 1,300 redundancies, while its concession business remains operational. The retailer entered administration in January after its private‑equity owner, Modella Capital, could not find a buyer for...
One in Four Retail Tech Providers Say AI Is Overhyped
A survey of retail‑technology providers at the Retail Technology Show 2026 found that 24% consider AI overhyped or confusing. While 34% say AI helps differentiate their solutions, 30% say it raises buyer expectations and 18% claim it adds market noise....
AI Referrals Deliver Almost Three Times the Conversion Rate of Traditional Search, New Research Suggests
Lebesgue’s analysis of 35,000 Shopify merchants shows AI referrals convert at 3.6% versus 1.23% for Google search, nearly three times higher. AI‑driven visits also produce about 30% more revenue per session. The findings signal a shift from click‑volume tactics to...
Nearly Half of Ecommerce Entrepreneurs Say Market Saturation Is Costing Them Customers
A new survey by The Accountancy Partnership reveals that 45.3% of UK ecommerce entrepreneurs blame market saturation for losing customers, as competition intensifies on online marketplaces that capture roughly one‑third of retail spend. Algorithm‑driven rankings and platform fees are hurting...
Q&A: Kingfisher’s David Jaffe Talks Marketplaces – and Making the Most of Opportunities
Kingfisher is leveraging its B&Q and Screwfix stores as fulfillment hubs, with roughly 90% of online orders shipped from physical locations. The retailer’s Marketplace initiative is scaling third‑party merchant onboarding and aims to enable cross‑border sales across Europe. Click & Collect times...
Retail Media Is Not Just About Retailers Any More
Retail media is expanding beyond traditional retailer‑owned inventory to capture shopper intent before a purchase decision is made. Multi‑retailer apps, digital leaflet aggregators, and deal platforms now generate pre‑purchase intent signals that can be packaged into targetable audience segments. Brands...
Particular Audience Launches PA DiscoveryOS App on Shopify – Signalling a New Era of Accessible Enterprise AI for Merchants
Particular Audience has launched the PA DiscoveryOS app on the Shopify App Store, delivering enterprise‑grade AI search, personalization, and retail‑media tools through a zero‑code, app‑based integration. The solution lets Shopify Plus merchants activate sophisticated AI infrastructure overnight, eliminating the need...
Retail Media Finds a New Signal: The Shopper’s State of Mind
Retail media is shifting from pure intent data to interpreting shoppers' cognitive and emotional states. Mental‑health experts highlight grocery trips as high‑stress decision points where fatigue, overload, and anxiety shape buying behavior. Platforms that can read in‑session signals—such as lingering,...
Hear Direct From Leading Broadcasters and Streamers at the CTV Summit 2026
RetailX will host the CTV Summit 2026 on May 14 in London, limiting attendance to 200 senior marketers and broadcasters. The agenda features keynotes from Netflix, Channel 4, Sky Media, ITV and a case study by Back Market, alongside a discussion of...
Nearly Half of UK Shoppers Experience Payment Failures at Checkout, Research Finds
Nearly half of UK shoppers—46%—reported a payment failure at checkout in the past year, according to Transaction Network Services (TNS). The study links most breakdowns to fragmented network connectivity rather than the payment software itself, especially in POS systems, kiosks...
UK Shoppers Turn to Multi-Supermarket Shopping as Grocery Affordability Tightens
New Beyond: Putting Data To Work Q1 2026 research shows UK workers now must work about 68 minutes (≈$25 per hour) to afford a typical grocery basket worth £22.30 (~$28). As affordability tightens, roughly 80% of shoppers spread their spend...
Asda and Deliverect Partner to Enhance Rapid Delivery Across Asda Express
Asda, the UK’s third‑largest grocery chain, has deepened its partnership with delivery‑platform specialist Deliverect to streamline quick‑commerce operations at Asda Express stores. The joint solution links on‑demand marketplaces such as Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo directly into store workflows,...
SubscriptionX 2026: Why Recurring Revenue, Membership and Loyalty Are Converging
SubscriptionX 2026, held on 17 June at Convene in London, spotlights the convergence of recurring revenue, membership and loyalty as a unified growth engine for retailers. The agenda shifts focus from rapid sign‑ups to retention, margin and lifetime value, with...
UK Subscription SMEs Lose £160k a Year to Failed Payments, New Study Shows
An Access PaySuite‑commissioned study of 250 UK subscription‑based SMEs finds they lose an average of £159,500 (about $204,000) each year due to failed payments, abandoned renewals and checkout friction. Transaction failures occur in 3.4% of attempts, with 55.8% never recovered,...
Clothing and Digital Retail Outperform as Consumers Prioritise “Everyday Treats” In March
Barclays' March Consumer Spend report shows UK shoppers shifting money toward apparel, beauty and digital subscriptions while travel and big‑ticket purchases retreat. Overall card spending rose 0.9% year‑on‑year, still lagging the 3.4% CPIH inflation rate, but essential categories posted modest...
What UK eCommerce Brands Need to Know About Post-Brexit EU Fulfilment
UK eCommerce brands are confronting higher costs and slower deliveries when shipping to EU customers after Brexit. Customs paperwork, import duties and the upcoming removal of the €150 ($165) exemption on July 1 2026 – replaced by a flat €3 ($3.30) duty...
Wayfair Launches Paid Loyalty Programme for UK Shoppers
Wayfair has introduced Wayfair Rewards, a paid loyalty scheme for UK shoppers, charging an annual £20 fee (about $25). Members receive a 5% cash‑back rebate on every purchase, free standard delivery regardless of order size, and perks such as a...
INTERVIEW: How Wayfair Uses Creators and TikTok to Drive Growth
Wayfair is leveraging TikTok creators and influencer‑driven content to fuel its next growth phase, positioning social platforms as the primary discovery engine for home‑ware shoppers. The company pairs inspirational videos with personalized product curation, encouraging users to explore multiple style...
OPINION: Ecommerce in 2026 – How Online Shopping Will Blend Into All Digital Experiences
E‑commerce in 2026 is defined by the convergence of content, community and shopping, moving the purchase decision from a final step to the moment of engagement. Live virtual events now serve as high‑attention windows where 80% of attendees are receptive...
UK Retail Footfall Lifted over Easter Weekend Despite Subdued Start
After a sluggish start to the quarter, the Easter bank holiday lifted UK retail footfall by 3.4% year‑on‑year, according to MRI Software. High‑street visits rose 4.1% overall, with Easter Monday alone seeing a 21.1% jump. Historic towns and coastal destinations...
Two in Five Gen Z Brits Would Let AI Manage Their Subscriptions, Research Finds
A Bango survey of 1,500 UK consumers reveals that 43% of Gen Z respondents would let artificial intelligence manage their subscriptions, compared with 31% across all ages. Trust in AI rises sharply among existing AI‑tool users, with 62% of those subscribers...
UK Consumers Shift From Browsing to Intent as High‑value Home and Finance Leads Surge
Analysis of 67 million email messages shows UK consumers are becoming more selective, clicking less but converting at higher rates. The shift toward an “intent economy” is driven by cost‑of‑living pressures, prompting shoppers to focus on home improvements and financial services...
Commerce Media ‘Firmly in the Growth Phase’, Finds SMG’s New Maturity Index
SMG’s newly launched Commerce Media Network (CMN) Maturity Index reveals the sector is solidly in a growth phase, with 58% of networks classified as mid‑market and 28% reaching mature status. The Index evaluates networks across three dimensions—What (capabilities, data, inventory),...
Riding the Rocketship: Creating a Retail Media Mindset
Retail media is rapidly evolving into a multi‑billion‑dollar growth engine, posting double‑digit expansion in key markets. The sector has shifted from a startup focus on formats and measurement to a scale‑up model demanding strategic alignment. Colin Lewis proposes that success...
Breaching the Customer Engagement Gap: How Retail Teams Can Finally Break Free to Innovate
Retail and ecommerce teams face a widening gap between consumer expectations for seamless, personalized experiences and their ability to deliver due to fragmented data and cumbersome tech stacks. InternetRetailing’s new bluepaper, created with imagino, identifies these operational bottlenecks and proposes...
OPINION: Five Forces Reshaping the Checkout in Germany
German retailers are accelerating POS modernization as labour costs rise, regulations tighten, and consumer payment habits shift. Cash still accounts for about 35% of sales, but card usage is projected to climb to 42% within five years, while contactless and...
Retail Media X Europe 2026: Why Retailers Need to Be in the Room This May
Retail Media X Europe will convene over 750 senior executives, brands, agencies, and tech innovators in London on 14 May 2026 to discuss the fast‑growing European retail media market, projected to reach £25 billion by 2026. The conference features three tracks—scaling networks,...
OPINION: Retail’s $210 Billion Paid Advertising Blind Spot
Global ecommerce retailers—estimated at nine to twelve million—are collectively spending about $210 billion on paid digital advertising each year, yet confidence in the returns from that spend is eroding. The rise of privacy regulations, cookie deprecation and AI‑driven ad platforms has...
OPINION: Securing Your Base in a Volatile Market: How Retention Data Drives Acquisition and Growth
Butter Payments CEO Charles Rosenblatt argues that in volatile markets, subscription firms must shift focus from acquisition to data‑driven retention. Machine‑learning models can analyze vast anonymized data to pinpoint churn drivers, payment failures, and high‑LTV prospects. By operationalising these insights,...
UK Brands Risk Billions as One-Third of Customers Switch Due to a Poor Digital Retail Experience
New MSQ DX research shows a widening perception gap between UK retailers and consumers, with one‑third of shoppers abandoning brands due to poor digital experiences. The gap is most acute among 25‑34‑year‑olds, where 64% switched brands in the past year....
How Digital Asset Management Helps Retailers Scale up and Attract Customers
Retailers are still stuck with fragmented digital storage—44% use local servers and 41% rely on individual hard drives, while 51% track product details in spreadsheets. This patchwork creates version‑control issues and slows time‑to‑market. Canto’s State of Digital Content 2026 report...
The UK’s Online Retail Sector Defies Rain and Global Instability to Deliver a Stable February at £9.25bn
UK online retail delivered £9.25 billion in February, a 3.3% year‑on‑year increase despite rain and geopolitical tension. The growth was powered by mobile commerce, social‑driven discovery and a rapid uptake of generative AI tools in the purchase journey. Falling prices in...
Retail Media at a Turning Point: Growth, Agents, and the New Rules of 2026
The Retail Media Podcast’s final episode, recorded at NRF 2026, highlights three pivotal shifts that defined 2025: marketplace sellers emerging as the primary growth engine, AI becoming the operating system for retail media, and product catalogs transforming into strategic discovery...
Mobile Basket Abandonment Surges Past 85% as Retailers Shift Recovery Tactics Beyond Email and SMS
Mobile basket abandonment has surged past 85%, up from a 75% global average last year. Retailers find traditional email and SMS recovery methods increasingly costly and less effective. New data from MobiLoud shows native push notifications, especially when used first...
Why Chrome’s HTTPS-First Policy Matters for Retail Media
Google Chrome’s new HTTPS‑First policy forces browsers to load sites over encrypted connections by default, warning users when only HTTP is available. Because Chrome commands a dominant share of global browsing, the change compels retail media networks to ensure every...
OPINION: Resale Isn’t a Sideshow Anymore — It’s Reshaping Digital Fashion Retail
The online fashion resale market has moved from niche to mainstream, with Vinted now the UK’s third‑largest fashion retailer by customer numbers and eBay agreeing to buy Depop for about $1.2 bn. UK online second‑hand sales are projected to hit roughly...
Retail Media Measurement: Absence of Evidence Is NOT Evidence of Absence
Retail media measurement is often portrayed as broken, yet the same sampling‑based, attention‑agnostic methods underpin TV, radio and outdoor metrics. Industry bodies such as IAB Europe and the MRC have already issued standardized frameworks that enable closed‑loop attribution and incrementality...
ANALYSIS: Dunelm’s New App Marks a Strategic Shift Toward Deeper Omnichannel Engagement
Dunelm launched a new iOS and Android app to deepen its omnichannel strategy, linking physical stores, digital experiences, and customer data. The app extends the AI‑powered search and recommendation engine first introduced on Dunelm.com, creating a unified intelligence layer across...
How Amazon’s Creative Agent Turns Retail Media Into a ‘Commerce Engine’
Amazon Ads unveiled Creative Agent, an AI‑driven creative partner inside Creative Studio that lets advertisers generate video and display ads through a chat‑based workflow. Leveraging Amazon’s retail insights, the tool pulls product pages, shopper signals and brand guidelines to produce...
Samsung Ads’ Smart TV Carousel Delivers for Non-Endemic Brands
Samsung Ads introduced an Immersive Carousel ad unit on its European Smart TV home screens, supporting up to five rotating tiles per placement. The format appears on more than 70 million Samsung TVs, auto‑rotating every five seconds and also navigable via...
GUEST COMMENT Hello, Answer Engines: How Brands Can Stay Seen when Users Don’t Click
In 2025 Google and Bing introduced AI‑powered snippets and chat‑style overviews that answer queries directly, ushering in a zero‑click search era. Brands can no longer rely on traditional click‑through SEO and must instead structure content for featured snippets, FAQ blocks,...
Walmart and UK Grocers Report Parallel Q4 Strength Despite Differing Retail Landscapes
Walmart posted a 5.6% revenue increase and a 10.8% rise in operating income for Q4 FY26, driven by a 27% jump in U.S. e‑commerce and 24% global digital sales growth. The retailer also saw advertising revenue surge 37%, with Walmart...
How HelloFresh Expanded Its Subscription Portfolio with Launch of Factor in Germany
HelloFresh has introduced its Factor ready‑to‑eat (RTE) brand in Germany, extending a portfolio that already succeeded in Canada and the United States. Factor delivers fresh, heat‑and‑eat meals with high‑protein and vegetarian options, targeting consumers who want convenience without cooking. The...
Epetōme Secures Multi-Million-Pound Investment to Scale Its Subscription-Based Gut Health Range Globally
Epetōme, the UK‑based gut‑health brand founded by nutritionist Emily English, has secured a multi‑million‑pound investment led by Active Partners and Redrice Ventures. The funding will accelerate its international rollout and fund expanded clinical trials on probiotics and prebiotics. Since its...
CASE STUDY: L’ERA Tops £140k in TikTok Live Sales as Livestream Shopping Gains Momentum
London jewellery brand L’ERA recorded over £140,000 in TikTok Live sales in 2025, nearly doubling its livestream revenue since launching in August 2023. The founders host four to six weekly livestreams, securing individual orders above £1,400 and using the channel...
Vinted’s Rise Signals a Turning Point in Europe’s Circular Fashion Economy
Vinted has become the UK’s third‑largest fashion retailer, reporting €813.4 million in revenue for 2024—a 36 % jump from the prior year—and is on track to breach €1 billion. The platform now serves over 17.4 million UK users and leads in France by volume,...
INTERVIEW: Why Independent Retailers Are Surviving on Service, Speed and Sheer Grit
Matt Sweeting, managing director of Claytons, explains how independent clothing retailers survive amid cost inflation and heightened competition from multichannel giants. He highlights that rising expenses, cautious shoppers, and pressure to match discounting and fast delivery erode margins, but superior...
ASICS EMEA Achieves Record Revenues as European Sportswear Demand Increases
ASICS EMEA posted a record €1.204 billion revenue for 2025, an 18.4% year‑on‑year increase. Growth was broad‑based, with SportStyle sales up 44% and strong gains across Performance Running, Tennis, Indoor and Apparel. Channel performance was robust: wholesale rose 22.5%, owned retail...