← Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
2025 Predictions Re-evaluated, Plus a Few New Ones | Reimagining Retail
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- [00:01]
Sarah
This episode is made possible by Quad. In marketing, everything must work seamlessly or efficiency, speed, and ROI all suffer. That's why Quad is obsessed with making sure your marketing machine runs smoothly with less friction and smarter integration. Better marketing is built on Quad. See how better gets done at www.quad.com buildbetter. Hi, this is Sarah. Before we get started, I want to let our listeners know that this will be my last podcast episod as host. After four and a half years filled with so much learning at eMarketer, I'm moving on to my next professional journey. Thank you to our podcast team, our analysts, and of course, our listeners for making this time so meaningful. I may be moving on, but Reimagining retail is not going anywhere. And you can tune in right here to a slate of guest hosts over the next few weeks. I know I'll be listening. Okay, onto the show. Hello, listeners. Today is Wednesday, July 16th. Welcome to behind the Reimagining Retail, an eMarketer podcast made possible by Quad. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives. I'm your host, Sara Lebo. Today's episode topic is how our 2025 predictions are doing, plus a few more. Let's meet today's guests. Joining me for today's episode, we have in studio with me, Susie David Canyon. Hi, Susie.
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Karina
Hello.
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Sarah
And also with us, joining us from across the pond, as one might say, it's Karina Perkins. Hey, Karina.
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Karina
Hi, Sarah.
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Sarah
Okay. In November of last year, our analysts put out a report with a number of retail trends and predictions for 2025. Some of these trends we've seen definitely play out, and some of them are still sort of in progress. We're halfway through the year, so we're going to check in on each of these trends, see where they're at, have they come to fruition, what's happening with them. And then at the end of the episode, we'll each present a much spicier prediction of our own, looking out for the rest of the year and the year ahead. So let's get started with the first trend we had in that report, which was Genai will unlock the potential of predictive AI to supercharge business growth. Let's start off with, like, what we meant by that. We meant that marketplaces are going to use AI for predictions.
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Karina
Not quite.
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Sarah
What did we mean by that?
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Karina
So predictive AI is what retailers and other companies have been using for years to do kind of forecasting and predict consumer behavior. But in order to get those predictions you need to have. It's not the easiest thing to interrogate so you need kind of that technological expertise in your company and it can take a bit of time, it can take a bit of resource to kind of get the best out of those predictive insights. So what generative AI can do is it can act as a kind of user interface which means that non technical staff members can interrogate the predictive analytics and get really fast actionable insights.
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Susie
And it would use the social context, right. So like it can understand, it does social listening for you, it can figure out what are the like people trends. It's the human language element. So it all came together because one of our predictions was that retailers were going to continue and or start to use the combination of gen AI and predictive AI for their inventory planning which some companies have. Like I think Mango is doing that. There are some companies doing it. But Karina, what's the outcome of this trend in terms of where we read.
- [03:48]
Karina
Well, so it's kind of a tricky one. I think we were right. I'm fairly certain that a lot of companies are doing this under the hood. The problem is that it's not really the kind of things that they tend to talk about, send press releases about, they like to talk about their kind of consumer facing gen AI but we do know that kind of AI forward enterprises so that companies that are really integrating AI into every element of their business are using this combination of technology. So rather than just focusing on gen AI in isolation, they're using it alongside other forms of AI like predictive AI. What we perhaps didn't anticipate, although we did talk about it in our tech trends to watch, is AI agents and how big the buzz around them would be this year. And I think certainly from a retail perspective everyone's really, really excited over their potential to kind of change the shopping journey and automate some of the shopping journey but actually that is if anything going to accelerate the trend that we're already talking about. Because AI agents, they use agentic AI for that kind of autonomy to automate the process. And agentic AI means you can link lots of different agents together and complete a task without human intervention. But they also use predictive AI and they use generative AI. So you might for instance in a marketing model have predictive AI which predicts that a customer is going to sort of drop off and then you would have generative AI which will generate the marketing copy needed to customer keep them on board. So it's kind of, it's using all of the AI. And I think really what we're seeing is that that combination of the different types of AI taking a kind of really comprehensive approach is what's going to drive growth.
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Susie
I don't want to steal Karina's thunder in that. I do think we got it right. It's super important.
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Karina
Yeah, we did. Yeah.
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Susie
But I do think the buzzier trend is the agentic AI. And maybe it's like when we were looking at the Trends, it was Q3 last year, and Gen AI was what everyone was talking about. And if you don't have genai, then you don't have agentic. But, like, the new shiny penny seems to be agentic right now.
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Sarah
Yeah, 100.
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Karina
And it's. And it's very new, which is why it's the shiny penny so much. Yeah.
- [05:57]
Sarah
Yeah. I would call this correct and in progress. I would say, if you're a retailer listening to this episode. Hi. The. The takeaway would be your competitors are doing this, even if they may not be talking about it. So make sure you're doing it as well.
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Karina
I've got one more thing to add to that discussion as well. So I think also the trend was that it was going to kind of supercharge growth. And again, that's been a little bit of a tricky thing to measure because there are a lot of challenges around measuring ROI and what growth is coming from AI and so on. But there was a really interesting study from Rackspace Technology, which was conducted by Coleman parks research in April 2025, and it identified these AI leaders, kind of companies that were really integrating AI throughout their organization and using advanced AI practices. And that would include things like combining generative and predictive AI. And it said that almost 2/3 of these AI leaders are reporting substantial benefits from AI. So I think we are really seeing the coming to fruition for companies that are investing in it wisely.
- [07:01]
Sarah
Okay, Susie, Karina's showing us up in data, so I'm on it. We need to keep up. Let's move on to trend two, which was China's E Commerce disruptors will be disrupted. Okay, I'm gonna take this one first.
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Susie
Okay, go.
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Sarah
Because obviously this has happened. However, when our analysts put this together, we didn't know who the president would be. We didn't know what US Policies would be around tariffs. So the way we saw this playing out was TikTok Shop is here to stay. I think that's fair to say she and will dive deeper into supply chain as a service, and TEMU will challenge the Everything store. And obviously we've seen Temu and Shein take some hits this year.
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Susie
So when we wrote this trend, it was more. We were leaning into. Yes. Everybody knew that there was like some unknowns for TikTok, but it was much more about the loophole. Right. So we were thinking these players became big and disrupted US players and European players and really global players because of the tax loophole, which is more of like an import tax loophole. Right. So, and now the disruption is much broader in that there is actually tariffs on the goods themselves being produced at any level and the taxes or tariffs are astronomically higher than anyone could have ever thought about. So it's not that we didn't get it right or wrong. There's a lot of disruption. It's just that the disruption was way bigger than we had anticipated and it's. We can't even see what's happening with these players because they're all trying to just figure out their inventory and their supply and how to get stuff there. So what we thought was going to be a year of continued growth in a different way has turned out to be something quite different.
- [08:45]
Karina
Yeah. And I think, interestingly, it's also going to disrupt other markets. So Shein and Temu have turned their attention to the UK and France. They've both ramped up advertising spend in those countries, but in the uk, regulators are also considering scrapping the rule that allows small parcels to enter the UK duty free. So they're not looking at the same kind of astronomical tariffs that the US is, but they are trying to close that loophole. I think it's also worth mentioning, aside from tariffs, the challenge from Amazon hall, which launched in beta in June 2025 and it's got kind of loads of products for $20 or less, with most under $10 and off delivery times of one to two weeks. So I think Amazon's really trying to create a business model there that goes after those retailers.
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Sarah
How do you see Amazon haul, I guess, being affected by these same tariffs, though? Like the products aren't coming from the.
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Susie
U.S. well, that's what I was going to say, I think 100% in foreign markets. The additional situation in the US is that the country of origin of the product, and so Amazon Hull 2 by default has. Has products coming from, not made in the us and so in the US market, that might be a challenge for them, whereas in the rest of the world, I think they can certainly take advantage of that.
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Karina
Yeah, I mean, I think the Amazon, it might be an issue for them in markets like Germany where Amazon has such a huge share of retail sales already.
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Sarah
Okay. So for China's E Commerce disruptors will be disrupted. I would say 100% correct prediction, not exactly playing out how we totally saw it, but definitely disruption happening there. Our next trend, mounting pressures will squeeze the long tail of retail media networks. Where are we at with this one?
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Susie
So I think again, we didn't know everything that was going to happen on the surface. This is truly happening and that there are lots of different pressures that are squeezing retail media network. It's coming from many different areas. Right. Brands and advertisers therefore are cash strapped and worried about margins. So they're being more judicious. There's definitely more competition in this commerce media space than there has ever been. So brands and advertisers are thinking about other places. There have not been new ones popping up in the retail world. Yeah, there have definitely been some tie ups between ad tech vendors trying to work with retailers. And I would say that the idea that advertisers prefer to just go to fewer places has panned out as we see with, you know, Amazon has the lion's share, Walmart a giant gap to second place and that it's Target.
- [11:24]
Sarah
Yeah, yeah, I, you're right. We haven't seen new retailers enter this space. We have seen, I'm not sure if it's within this calendar year, honestly. It probably isn't. But we have seen new non retail players enter this space from financial media networks to travel media networks to even like gaming media networks. Mohegan sun has a media network.
- [11:43]
Susie
So much of that is in this calendar year.
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Sarah
Yeah. So the long tail is, I mean technically not for retail media but for commerce media getting longer, which I think is going to make it even squeezier, which is a word we're inventing.
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Karina
Yeah. And I think we've got some similar challenges in the UK and Europe. It's a bit of a different landscape here. We're a little bit behind the US in terms of retail media's development and we've still seen double digit growth in retail media ad spend in the UK, France and Germany. But in the UK particularly that's come down from 30.8% growth in 2023. So there has been a bit of a slowdown in Germany, 80% of retail media spend is with Amazon, so it's got huge dominance there. In the UK and France there's a little bit more competition, they're more digitally developed. Especially in the uk. The grocers, Tesco, Sainsbury's Asda are quite strong players in the space. I think there's more than 100 local retail media networks operating in Europe. So it's hugely fragmented landscape. But one thing that's hindering investment is the fact that there's not many that operate cross border. And so that limits the size of the market that each one can play to. And again that gives Amazon a huge advantage.
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Sarah
Do you think you'll see partnerships between those retailers to cross borders or do you think that will face like regulatory challenges?
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Karina
So what we've seen already is retail media networks forming, which are a few retailers kind of banding together and forming a retail media network. So we're already seeing that and that's happening cross border.
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Sarah
We're not seeing that in the US yet, but I think we will.
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Susie
I think because it's just one country, it might be a little bit of a different thing. But like, and in Europe some of the brands that do sell across countries and do cross border are vertically integrated like a Zara. So why, you know, that's not. We saw from Gap that didn't work, that when you're a one brand show, unless you start building a marketplace, you're never going to be a retail media in the way that it's designed to be.
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Karina
Yeah, I mean I think the issue here is that a lot of the kind of strong retail media networks in the grocery space, which is why there's not so much cross border. But yeah, we are seeing a lot of retail media networks launching with a lot of retailers partnering together to get that scale.
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Sarah
So for mounting pressure will squeeze the long tail of retail media networks.
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Susie
A. Yeah, I love giving myself an A. Yeah, it's not my trend, but I still love pretending.
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Sarah
Next trend, retailers will take a greater stake in media and entertainment content. We expected to see more brands launching production companies and retailers using their own owned and operated channels. We saw some of this at the end of last year. I remember there was like a Hulu Sephora partnership. I can't think of any times I've seen it this year beyond Amazon. And I guess Walmart plus has partnered with Paramount.
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Susie
Right. But also from last year. But so I would say if you take this trend and the next one, which was about the paid membership perks and that sort of how do you distinguish yourself from the other? And then you lump all of this into the loyalty sphere. And how are retailers and brands distinguishing themselves and doing activations and different sort of engagements with potential consumers and customers that are beyond like let me give you A coupon so that you come buy from me. And so it's becoming like a completely different sort of way of thinking about loyalty and brand building. And I think given the economic uncertainty, the tariffs, everything that's happening. To your point, there hasn't been a lot happening in either of the spheres because I think it's a bit of a longer game and people are worried about the short term right now and cost is the biggest concern.
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Sarah
Yeah.
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Susie
Having inventory on your shelves. I don't know if you guys saw a lot of the pictures over July 4th on LinkedIn where people were showing retailer, but it was always the same retailer, retailer that she'll not be named. Their shelves were empty. And so I think retailers have bigger problems to fill than this. That said, Mattel is working on Barbie was a success already a couple years ago, which is kind of crazy. They're working on Hot Wheels, which is like a Mattel branded production. Lego has done some work. There's still something around partnerships and like Martha Stewart and Maman, which is a coffee shop here in New York, have a thing going. So there's definitely stuff happening. But you're right, it's not quite as big of a splash as we had anticipated it to be.
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Sarah
So, Susie, if you were to take this trend and maybe like combine it with our final trend, which was partner perks will be the new pillars of paid retail memberships, how would you sort of classify the kind of accurate in progress state of both of these trends combined?
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Susie
I think they're in progress and it's not a quick fix sort of. Right. If you think about Walmart or a Target that's trying to find new partners, it takes time for everybody to understand who's their overlap, why are they even partnering together? What is the benefit to each of them? Is this the marketing play? Is it a product play? Is it a overall sort of let me grow my business with lower cost of acquisition. So I think those types of things take longer to do. It is not. I think we'll see them more. But right now there's so much turmoil and uncertainty in what's happening in terms of the more basic parts of retail that I think it's a. It's a tough one.
- [17:04]
Karina
I think as well, if you look to the uk, where we've had really quite a difficult economic environment for a few years now, what we've seen with loyalty, especially here, is actually it's kind of gone back to the basics. So retailers have actually started introducing lower prices for loyalty members. So it's not even Just to kind of collect your coupons or collect your points. It's if you're a loyalty member, then you get a straight off lower price. So it'll be interesting to see whether that sort of thing happens in the US as well.
- [17:32]
Sarah
So based on our five trends, five statements we've gone through, what like percentage would you say have come to fruition so far?
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Susie
Fruition or have the potential to be fruition so far?
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Sarah
I'm going to go with like, I mean, three quarters. Oh, okay.
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Karina
No, I would say three quarters.
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Sarah
All right, solid. And we're less than three quarters of the way through the year, so that's solid progress. Okay. We're moving into the second half of this episode, which is where we'll share our own predictions. These are our hot takes, spicy predictions, things that probably won't happen. Who can say? Although everything we say is stuff that really might happen. But there are sort of hot takes. We each came up with one. I'm going to go first. My prediction is Walmart will launch a new online fashion marketplace to take advantage of Temu and Shein's absence. Obviously, absence is sort of a loaded word here. Obviously Shein and Temu are still around, but they've taken such a big hit with tariffs that I see Walmart, which has already made moves to get into higher end fashion, trying to fill this fast fashion space that Temu and Shein will leave open. Now the challenge here is that Walmart is still producing these items outside of the us so like we mentioned before, there will still be tariff challenges here. I just think Walmart might have an easier go at it than companies that are associated with China.
- [19:03]
Susie
I think it's really interesting. I think it goes back to the Amazon haul. So it's a little bit like, is it going to try and do an Amazon haul scenario, lean in on its fashion? Sort of. It's trying to push into fashion. But that, that lower price point. It's interesting. I think it's a tough one though, only because they already have so much private label that's not super expensive, that's not necessarily seen as fashionable. So I think to get there they'll have to turn that sort of more basic stuff into.
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Sarah
Well, this is why I think like its own marketplace makes sense. It's almost like it's a rebrand without having to come out with a bunch of new private labels. Sort of the like what Walmart did with better goods, which is a private label unto itself. Trying to associate these brands with fashion, with fashion marketplace in its own siloed area.
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Karina
I wonder as well whether we might see, you know, we know that some countries are targeted with particularly high tariffs, other countries not facing as high tariffs, perhaps some of them have the potential to produce fashion cheaper. So I wonder whether we might see kind of retailers reaching out to, you know, their manufacturing bases to other countries that aren't so exposed to the tariffs.
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Susie
And Walmart is so gigantic that it certainly has that advantage of scale.
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Sarah
So this prediction, are you guys buying into it?
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Karina
I love this one.
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Susie
Yeah, I'm only half in.
- [20:22]
Sarah
Great. One and a half. I'll take it. Susie, what is your prediction?
- [20:27]
Susie
So given that we just talked about tariffs, everybody is very value conscious, everybody's looking for low cost, everybody has tight budgets and tariffs are making things more expensive in every way, shape or form. Combined with there's this whole reshoring movement of Made in America which helps retailers with their margin as well because it reduces shipping costs. And sorry, I'm leading into, I'm leading up to it so that you all give me a one. And because retailers need more control over their inventory and better understanding of where things are and how quickly to get them. And because of our first trend. Look at how good. Look at how I'm building into this. And because of our first trend about Gen AI and predictive AI and trying to be more in real time with trends. One more and and because it's hard to get cheap plastic goods now with the tariffs in place. Much of that stuff is produced in China or Asia in general. One more and, and 3D printing was a really big deal a while ago and now it is still a big deal in some industries like prosthetics. There's a long list. I'm not going to go through it since I've had so many ends.
- [21:43]
Sarah
Bring it home.
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Susie
I think now this is the part that it's hard to know. I originally thought that Walmart will launch a line of cheap goods made in House with 3D printers in Berlin. Right now there's a company called Sole Box that's collaborating with Zellerfeld and they're doing 3D printing, shoes, running shoes in store. So it's not far fetched to think that retailers are going to bring this back. There's so many reasons why they're going to want to bring this back to do it.
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Sarah
So is your prediction that Walmart will.
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Susie
Launch a line of cheap goods made in house with 3D printers?
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Karina
My quick question is are these going to be plastic goods correct?
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Susie
Yes.
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Karina
Okay, so my only question here would be Walmart has made some environmental pledges around emissions target. This is such a good read that it's likely to miss its 2025 and 2030 targets. So, you know, whereas perhaps TEMU hasn't made quite the same pledges. I'm not 100% sure. Is that going to put Walmart off launching kind of thousands of cheaply made plastic product?
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Susie
So that is a very good question. I had it as an and but given that I had too many ants, I decided not to throw that one in. But so 3D printing, if you're doing just in time printing is actually probably more sustainable because there won't be extra plastic things lying around. I don't know how much energy 3D printing uses up, but if you think about all of the shipping of the cargo stuff that's coming in all, I think all of that is part of their footprint of sustainability. So I think it should put them at parity.
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Karina
But I don't know. Because you're still selling a lot of plastic.
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Sarah
Yeah, but did they commit to not filling landfills or just to not do it, making admission emissions?
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Susie
Oh, I don't know that. That's a good question.
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Karina
I don't know.
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Sarah
I don't know if they ever committed to not filling landfills.
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Susie
I feel like they were already like. I hear what you're saying. I thought you meant around the emissions. But if it's the landfill piece, they're already selling the plastic plates. Right. It's just that now we're saying the plastic plates were $3 are going to be $8 because of tariffs, so they're going to just start making them in house.
- [23:53]
Sarah
So obviously I think Walmart has a lot of potential to move right now with Chinese E commerce being challenged. This is kind of similar to my prediction. And in that sense I, I could see this happening. My question is, do we have in the US right now like the machinery, the infrastructure to do 3D printed goods on this level?
- [24:17]
Susie
So that's another great question. I am not that knowledgeable, but a couple of years ago when we were talking about 3D printing, a few, few years ago, probably like three years ago before I hit it big, if you remember, we were talking about 3D printing, AR VR and how all of that together was going to help with returns and margin. So I think there is the capability, I think that there is the technology because there are again, prosthetics, there's a laundry list of companies that are already using 3D printing. The question I don't really know about is whether Walmart would build the 3D printing capabilities in house or whether they would just buy the tech outright. They've done both. Do you remember how they bought a farm? I mean a farm is a big word. A few years ago they were. Well again like four years ago they were worried about beef production and there were lots of issues with beef production. So they just went in and bought some sort of capability, like a processing capability. So it like they've done you know, purchasing of and like figuring out how to control their supply chain in a better way.
- [25:18]
Sarah
Yeah. I just know that when the tariffs began, something that our colleague Zach brought up is this idea that like all of this manufacturing will come to the US is challenged by the fact that we don't have the infrastructure to do this kind of manufacturing at scale. And in order to build that infrastructure we would once again have to import either the machines or the like goods to create that infrastructure.
- [25:43]
Susie
Yeah. So yeah, I mean we don't have to believe my 3D printing. But what I will tell you that's a diff like that's if I need to make toilet paper and the Procter and Gamble factory in the US has three things that make the toilet paper and they were buying from Mexico that was making two of that, the slots. Now they have to make five slots here. So they have to produce the vats and whatever. So like they don't even have the space for that. So the throughput is harder to put through. This is a slightly. I take your point. This is a slightly different endeavor in that rebuilding like the car factories rebuilding a bunch of things too hard. It's a ten year project, you know, it's not a two year, one year project.
- [26:26]
Sarah
Yeah. Never mind what the tax policies will be in 10 years.
- [26:30]
Susie
Yeah, that's true.
- [26:31]
Sarah
So I'm going to give this a half because I definitely agree with Walmart making TN Shimu like moves. I'm not sure if the infrastructure is there for this one.
- [26:40]
Susie
Karina.
- [26:41]
Karina
Yeah, I'll give this a 65%.
- [26:44]
Sarah
Okay.
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Karina
I think I love the idea. I definitely could see it happening. I think there's a few questions around it but I. Yeah.
- [26:51]
Sarah
All right Karina, give us your prediction.
- [26:54]
Karina
Okay. My prediction is that OpenAI will launch a plug and play AI store associate for retail stores. So by the end of 2025, which I appreciate the timescale is perhaps a bit optimistic, it will partner with a major retailer to pilot a GPT powered digital store associate which will be deployed on smart screens in store.
- [27:17]
Sarah
100% I agree with this. I buy this, this makes so much sense to me. First of all, on the retailer websites we're already seeing this. Maybe not with ChatGPT specifically, although it is with a lot of them. I think that ChatGPT is the name you want to be seen seen partnering with and that's why I think this is going to happen in store. Will it work in store? I don't know. We see ChatGPT hallucinate. I don't even know how strong ChatGPT's like partnerships business is. I know they have a lot of partnerships but I don't know how good they are at like the pipeline of information coming from retailers. And working with a retailer with 10,000, 100,000 SKUs is different than working with an online database. So I don't know how well it'll work in store, but, but if I'm a store once again like Walmart, I would love to be seen piloting a ChatGPT in store associate partnership.
- [28:10]
Susie
You know what, can you tell me a little bit more about this? Like take Walmart, who has their two different sort of chatbot helpers that are, you know, gen AI enabled, probably predictive, all of the above sort of buzzwords for AI that we talk about. So my first question is why would you partner with the OpenAI instead of just build it in house? But I also didn't understand. So when you go into the store, will you see a TV screen and you'll click it and have a conversation with the TV screen or will it be like the instacart cart where you get a cart and the there's a screen that follows you along or is it that the associate is going to use a handheld that helps them tell me more about that piece.
- [28:52]
Karina
Yeah, so I love all of those ideas. Thank you. And I'll steal them for my own.
- [28:55]
Susie
Yes, please.
- [28:56]
Karina
So I could really see this working best actually in the UK where in of sort store retail media is becoming a really big thing and you've got retailers have really extensive now digital screen networks in their stores. So there are screens at islands, there are screens outside the stores, there are screens. Tesco has digital self scanners so you go around and scan your shopping. It's offering retail media on those screens. Why not? Also a helpful shopping assistant. So you could say, you know, I need to find the tea bags. What aisle are they? Oh, they're on aisle six. Oh, I really need a cake for dinner tonight. I need six, you know, tell you what kind of cake you should get. Maybe tell it a recipe or something that you want to cook and it'll tell you where to go and get your groceries.
- [29:35]
Susie
It's interesting because like if you think about some of the apps that like in the, in the US this might be one of those like retail has evolved in different ways in different markets because Canada too doesn't have quite as many screens but has way more screens than the U.S. but like if you go to the Home Depot app, I'm pretty sure that it's still there. There are a few of these branded apps where if you go to the app and you say like I'm looking for X, it'll tell you what aisle in that store if you enable location. Because obviously not everything is in the same aisle in every store. So it's almost like a souped up version. I believe this. I think it's already happening in some in the US with some apps. I just don't know if you need the chat GPT. I heard what you said about it giving you extra boost of credit. Yeah but I just don't know if you need it. If you're already sophisticated enough. It's almost like it'll help the little brands get there faster.
- [30:21]
Karina
Well, I think it depends on how you know in the US you've got like Walmart, they're investing kind of huge, they've got their own massive AI infrastructure but that's not the case throughout the rest of the world necessarily. I appreciate this is a kind of US focused one but even some of the big retailers in this country don't necessarily have their own AI infrastructure. They're kind of partnering with suppliers. So I think that yeah, it's Costco.
- [30:44]
Sarah
Costco is going to do it. Costco doesn't have a digital infrastructure and they need a partnership. People in Costco are already members so you could get logged in members using their phones. I don't know.
- [30:57]
Susie
This is a tricky one, right, because it's like, it's that it's the same.
- [31:00]
Sarah
Sam's Club because so many people use the app in Sam's Club.
- [31:04]
Susie
But Walmart is building out its own.
- [31:06]
Sarah
Yeah, Costco you never.
- [31:07]
Susie
There is no even app and this comes like the beacon technology in that you keep. You have to put so much money. Again, I think this is a UK thing where some of the smaller stores, smaller brands who don't have their own will do it. Here we're not even ready to get there because like if you take a Costco there is no. The only. Well they're, they're a stores first. They have a very small app if it wasn't for Covid, they wouldn't even have delivery, I don't think, really, except for giant items. Their stores are gigantic. It's like a warehouse, but There are no TVs anywhere to be found except for the TV electronics.
- [31:45]
Sarah
Yeah.
- [31:45]
Karina
I could see Tesco doing something like this because they have such a massive digital infrastructure in their stores now. And also they have a really robust loyalty program which is very linked to their retail media. And I think if you can tie all of that loyalty card data, if, if the AI were to know that you're a club card member, it would know what you've previously bought. It could say, oh, you know, don't forget to buy your Twixes because you really like them for tea time.
- [32:09]
Susie
Wait, Twix.
- [32:10]
Karina
I mean, really interesting applications.
- [32:11]
Susie
Did you say Twix?
- [32:12]
Sarah
Yeah, we've already got chocolate bar.
- [32:14]
Susie
Yeah, you have that for tea time.
- [32:16]
Karina
Do you know what tea time is?
- [32:17]
Susie
Yeah, it's when you drink tea at 4 o'. Clock. No.
- [32:21]
Karina
Yeah, when the tea alarm goes off.
- [32:22]
Susie
Yeah, but you have a tea alarm. But wait, but Twix in America, is.
- [32:26]
Sarah
A tea alarm a real thing?
- [32:28]
Susie
You're not having tea with a chocolate bar.
- [32:30]
Karina
Sure, why not?
- [32:31]
Susie
Oh, I don't know. That seems very. Not butter, biscuits and life.
- [32:36]
Sarah
Suzy, are you buying digestives? Are you buying Karina's OpenAI prediction?
- [32:41]
Susie
I'm half in.
- [32:42]
Sarah
I'm fully in. Especially for, like, a publicly traded company. I think that this sort of partnership would be great for valuation. I'm in. Did I add another layer to it that you wanted to get into?
- [32:52]
Karina
I mean, can I say that I'm not even 100% sure that I'm in, just because I'm not sure that the technology's there yet, But I'm gonna go with the win.
- [33:00]
Sarah
Okay, that is all we have time for today. Karina has to get to tea time. Her tea alarm just went off. Thank you so much for being here, Karina, and congratulations on your wedding next week.
- [33:12]
Karina
Thanks so much, Sarah.
- [33:13]
Sarah
Thank you for being here, Suzy.
- [33:15]
Susie
Thanks for having me.
- [33:16]
Sarah
Congratulations on your great prediction.
- [33:18]
Susie
Thank you. I'm very excited about it.
- [33:19]
Sarah
Thank you to our listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Marcus, Victoria, Stu, Lance, John and Danny. I predict that I will miss you all so much. Please leave a comment or review and remember to subscribe to the behind the Numbers podcast. The team will be back next Wednesday with another episode of Reimagining Retail. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of behind the Numbers Me Marketer podcast. Made possible by quad.