Zara and H&M are facing a lot of competition from the likes of
SHE and and to some degree both are trying to elevate who they
are and what their position is to justify their perhaps higher
cost. Hello, welcome to the Retail
podcast. Now for some of you who are
savvy out there and have been to a few conferences across the
globe, you'll recognise my next guest, Michelle Evans from
Euromonitor is the global read. Sorry, global would be for
retail insights. She was also at NRF doing the US
grocery trends, so we're very fortunate to have her.
I'm, I'm a massive fan of Michelle and Urine monitor.
I really enjoy the way that they distil these major trends, major
data elements. I've I've seen Michelle, I think
over two years now at different conferences at NRA Shop Talk and
each time I'm left delighted. Michelle, welcome to the show.
And thank you. Thank you for having me on.
That's OK. So I believe in, in, in
imminently you're going to be releasing your top five digital
trends for 2025 and you're going to be able to maybe just take us
through through that. Yeah, yeah.
So this is work we've done annually.
I think this is our 9th year. So our digital shopper trends
look at, you know how our most digitally savvy shoppers are
changing and, and what to expect in the year ahead.
So yeah, I'm happy to to talk through some of them with you.
Could you just give us a little heads up on you know yourself
and your own monitor? Yeah.
So for those maybe not familiar with your monitor, we're a
global market intelligence agency.
So we're based out of London, I'm out of our Chicago office
and we help clients around the world with their growth
strategies. We do research across the number
of industries in particular I'm in our, you know, retail
ecommerce type area. So I've managed insights and in
our client engagements in that realm.
So I've been at the company it's you know, this year will be 15
years and have been in in this space for a while helped to
launch originally our digital shopper.
We do have a product called digital shopper that's coming up
on I think 9 years since we've launched that.
So that was early days on mobile was, you know, starting to
change how consumers shop. So I've been focused on that and
then obviously picked up for this wider repel vantage point
along the way. And that's why I spoke about
grocery trends of the recent interrupt show.
What are the top five digital trends that you're seeing for
2025? Yeah, happy to talk through some
of them. So I think you know, every year
when we do this, there's some some overarching trends are
overarching themes, I guess is the right word that come to
mind. So in recent years, things like
greater sophistication of E com and social media, social media
is playing a big role in our report this year.
One of them is around the idea of brands and retailers having
to rebuild trust with consumers. So this is, you know, if you
think about social media when it started, you know, consumers
became a bit savvy, realised, you know, brands and retailers
may not, you know, they're, they're putting out messages and
maybe I should trust or not trust.
And then influencers came along and, and then they were
obviously selling, you know, sponsorships against against
themselves as well. So increasingly consumers will
become, you know, a bit more wary when it when they're
interacting in that medium. So what we're talking about here
is more so the rise of, you know, micro nano influencers and
the role that that they play in, you know, building that trust
with consumers. Obviously they tend to be, you
know, a bit more community driven, Maybe they're actually
in your community or maybe they're, you know, in a
community, you know, that that more centred around interest,
but someone that you can trust to guide you to to products and
services. And so one of the other trends
that we're looking at, I would say speaks more to it.
It's also social related, you know, consumers or clearly on
social media or clearly online more and on social media more.
So it's just the place that they're interacting and
naturally, you know, looking maybe to shop.
So this trend looks at, you know, the the shopification of
social media, the idea of making these platforms easier to shop.
So we're seeing, you know, these operators, you know, bring in
these different types of new functionality to make it easier
to, you know, execute the purchase right online.
So one of the ones I think about is Instagram and they pushed in
the last year, you know, making retailers and brands stay within
Instagram to sell the product. So you know, if, if it is a
brand or a retailer pushing something and you see the video,
you know, as you click on it, you'll see the, the buy now
button and you're taken through through that experience.
So it's, it's keeping them within the platform.
Clearly that means more commissions for the, for the
platform themselves. And then, you know, there's
other things like YouTube has done some different efforts when
it comes to an affiliate programme where they're making
it easier to tag things within videos, you know, to to execute
said purchase. And we're also seeing different
partnerships, like there was a partnership between Instacart
and Google Ads. Now they've added YouTube as
well. So it's connecting those dots,
you know, to make it easier for consumers to execute on those
platforms. And next one I can talk about
there's there is a threat of social in this one, but this one
is tilted more towards the medium that you connect with
consumers. So specifically it's about the
rise of sort of the, the video driven type of connections.
So you know it, it plays out in different ways.
So it could be shoppable video, it could be live streams,
obviously they could be hosted on social media, but also it
goes beyond that because they could be on retailer sites and
brand sites and whatnot. So this trend is, it's based on
the notion that when we think about different medians meeting
medians, mediums of consumers obviously engage more when it
comes to video, you know, that's deemed more engaging than words
or or photos or whatnot. And in our data, consumers
report streaming videos at least weekly of 71% of the population.
So, you know, this is an activity they do frequently and
this is, you know, becoming more powerful, more impactful, you
know, in the retail and in e-commerce sphere where we're
seeing, you know, retailers, brands, social media operators
leveraging this more fully. I think of an example, obviously
I'm in the US and one of the examples I think about a lot,
Amazon is clearly doing different things in this where
they have the Amazon Live programme, you know, the live
streaming. Obviously, they haven't found
the success like an Alibaba has because of our different
cultures. They also launched what they
call a shoppable channel called Fast on Prime Video.
So it's more of a throwback to the QVC home shopping type of
experiences that Americans would be more familiar with.
And then, you know, another example from even Amazon is, you
know, we have our NFL and they have been broadcasting during
the regular season in games on Thursday night on Amazon Prime
and during the commercials, they're all shoppable videos.
So it was a really interesting experience.
Obviously a different type of experience and watching the NFL
on a CBS or NBC or something like that.
Just because, you know, the commercialization, the
commercials that are put to you as a consumer, you know, these
are more interactive. You know, they're showing you
products. There's AQR code, you scan the
QR code, it's immediately going to the product page for Amazon.
It's about that creating that more immersive experience
online. Really there's benefits of
shopping online, but there's there's something you miss
versus in store shopping. So, you know, I think it's
really about tapping into that, you know, more immersive, more
dynamic type of experience. So, yeah, video LED, whether
it's, you know, a recorded video that, you know, they've now made
shoppable or if it's live streaming.
Certainly live streaming has been fairly strong coming out of
China, you know, five years ago really.
But it's been slower in the West, But we're seeing more and
more traction around that kind of idea.
So we really wanted to highlight, you know, the
importance of this medium and how it's being leveraged to
connect with shoppers. It feels like one of those music
countdowns. And on to #4.
And this one shifts gears. It's there's no real social
element. I think it's one of the more,
it's one of the more interesting ones to me.
And this is where we speak about these low cost platforms that
are really gaining traction. So obviously this ties into, you
know, the the cost of living crisis that consumers continue
to navigate and, and seeking out budget friendly options.
And over the last, this is the third year, we've had a trend
that related to this budget crisis and consumers, you know,
using digital tools to find deals, root out the best deals,
even, you know, finding dupes, that kind of thing, how they
might use digital platforms. But this one, you know, goes to
the idea of these these players that have rose to prominence.
You know, we think some of that obviously it's, you know, I
think partially driven from this budget mindset, but you also
have consumers that have become more comfortable shopping
online. For some consumers, you know,
they've been doing this for 2025 years, maybe some are newer to
the game. And you know, I think in the
early days when some of these platforms came out of China
several years ago, there was concerns about the quality of
the products. But obviously we're seeing
consumers, you know, more comfortable with ordering from
some of these, we call them Chinese affiliated websites.
Obviously some of them have shifted where their headquarters
are to to establish that or make that disconnection, I suppose.
But yeah, they're, you know, clearly players like Timu have
have rose to prominence of Xi'an TikTok shop.
And then you do have others, you know, other established players.
Marketplaces. Aliexpress.
Yeah, yeah, long established, but I'm thinking even like an
Amazon opening their Amazon Hall launching mat and no.
Congee are absolutely yes. Yeah.
And then you have a player like Zalando that has, you know, an
off price platform as well called Lounge where it has
heavily discounted products. So, you know, players, you know,
obviously Amazon is somewhat, I think more, more mirroring what
these other players are doing. 1 like Zalando obviously has a
thread, a platform that they're looking to do.
But then you also have other players like we talked about H&M
on our report from the standpoint that you know is Zara
and H&M are facing a lot of competition from the likes of
Sheen and and you know, fast fashion.
And really both Zara and H&M have dug their heels in and
tried to sort of adjust their messaging to consumers.
So you know, Zara has made a lot of store upgrades, H&M is
starting to do that. And to some degree both are
trying to elevate who they are and what their position is to
justify their their perhaps higher cost versus shooting
products. Yeah, I've heard that.
I heard that someone at one of the keynote NRF was talking
about how actually it was the lady, the CEO of Rent the
Runway. She was the one talking about
how Mango Zara have all you know, their, their quality of
their garments are getting better because they they have to
differentiate in, in a really competitive market.
OK, I I hope I don't sound like a radio disc jockey.
And in a #5 we have. Yeah, of course, no trends list
is complete without a mention of AI.
So last year we did look at Jen AI and how it was coming into
retail in different ways, you know, as one of the technologies
that it was creating a more more immersive is coming to mind is
that's not the right word that I'm thinking of a more intuitive
was what we call intuitive e-commerce, a more intuitive
experience. So we're taking a look at Jenny
I again this year is specifically the agents and
those type of developments. Obviously, you know, the agents
and theory should help with creating a more sort of like
complete experience and connecting the dots across, you
know, different operations and such and you know, have a
potential to to really have an impact in retail experiences.
I got you. What what stands out for you in
terms of the the five trends? What was the what was the thing
that surprised you about it? Yeah, I think this year I would
say we leaned in harder on social media than we have in
past. In past we might have, I would
say we would definitely have one, maybe two that touched on
social. So I think it it likely just
speaks the fact that social media is playing a more
prominent role in in e-commerce type of transactions.
Obviously it's, you know, really the cornerstone of how, you
know, brands and retailers connect with their shoppers.
So so that being one of them. So we've just had that
unfortunately small little technical problem where we've
lost the image from Michelle, but she's still there.
So Michelle, with that, I'd like to say thank you.
Thank you for sharing those digital trends with us and look
forward to seeing you hopefully at one of the major conferences.
Yeah. Thank you.
It's been great to share these with your audience and
appreciate the conversation and look forward to connecting with
Person in 2025.