Fetch at Shoptalk: How brands are building the future consumers want

Shoptalk 2024, the premier gathering of retail innovators, has come to a close. Last week, Fetch joined the retail world’s smartest minds at the annual conference in Las Vegas, spearheading insightful conversations and learning about the industry’s challenges.

All week, Fetch was at the center of the action, slinging lattes and meeting with brands. Key discussion topics centered around the transformative power of AI, the importance of crafting seamless customer journeys and building lifelong connections with consumers.

Here are the top insights brands need to effectively reach today’s consumers.

Effective AI requires high-quality data

Several Shoptalk sessions underscored how generative AI enhances retail capabilities, enabling brands to speed up product development, improve decision-making and personalize digital campaigns. But while AI technologies offer immense potential, their true value to retailers lies in a brand’s ability to gather and input high-quality data. 

Consistent, verified and reliable data enhances AI technology effectiveness, regardless of how it’s used. For example, Fetch has developed world-leading receipt-reading technology that can decipher, catalog and glean insights from item-level purchase information from up to 80 million receipts every week. This data is verified – we have the receipts to prove it – and retail-agnostic, providing the fullest picture of how a person shops.

With this high-quality transaction data, Fetch can confidently power its world-class performance marketing capabilities while delivering reliable consumer insights to brand partners. 

Brands need to revolutionize the retail customer journey

Amidst escalating competition and an increasingly crowded market, customer experience is a wildly important factor in consumers’ decision-making processes. This is especially true for younger shoppers, who expect a seamless consumer journey and exhibit less brand loyalty. In 2024, personalization and innovation are the name of the game.

That said, some brands are innovating by exploring alternative customer experiences. At Shoptalk, PacSun CEO Brieane Olson spoke about how the brand caters to a young, digitally native audience by accepting crypto payments. The clothing retailer also partners with Roblox to offer generationally relevant loyalty club member benefits. By engaging with consumers via the platforms they enjoy, brands provide more reasons for customers to keep coming back.

Brand data use actively shapes customer trust

Brands are keenly aware of shifting privacy regulations and how consumers want their personal information used. But not all brands have updated their strategies to protect customer data, which can negatively impact consumer sentiment.

Using third-party cookies, which track a user’s behavior across different websites, can be risky. This tracking technology can make shoppers feel as though retail brands are watching their every click. When customers feel this way, they’re less likely to trust the brand – and they might even stop buying from them.

Instead, brands should focus on incorporating zero-party data, which is information directly from shoppers with their consent. This kind of data is more reliable, and it gives brands better insights into what their customers want. By relying more on this type of data, brands can understand their customers better, target them more accurately and create more personalized experiences. 

Closed-loop measurement is crucial for sustained growth

Now more than ever, retailers need to directly connect advertising efforts to business outcomes. In addition to proving out advertising ROI, closed-loop measurement enables brands to have a better understanding of the consumer – what they respond to, which types of content are most effective and more. 

Closed-loop attribution enables retailers to accurately assess the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. This enables brands to identify which advertising channels, messages or creative collateral are performing best, then optimize strategies accordingly. But in an industry split between digital and brick-and-mortar outposts, effective closed-loop measurement is difficult to find.

Platforms like Fetch are rising to meet this challenge. Deemed a “click-to-brick” activation, the Fetch app helps retailers drive people into stores to make purchases. Activating on Fetch results in physical-world shopping behavior – and with the receipts to prove a transaction, retail brands can rest assured that their campaigns are effective. 

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While most Shoptalk conversations covered AI, consumer experience, measurement and data privacy, all discussions pointed toward a simple question: “How do brands get consumers to pick a brand again and again?”

As America’s rewards app, Fetch enables brands to create lifelong consumers through the power of Fetch Points. Customers get rewarded for every receipt they snap, and Fetch transforms that transactional data into performance marketing and behavior-changing insights at scale. The app has unprecedented sightline into consumer purchasing behavior, capturing $152 billion in sales annually. 

Fetch is redefining how brands and consumers connect by creating moments of daily delight for users. With more than 5 million five-star reviews, Fetch is the platform where consumers actively look for brands to buy.

Ready to help your customers live rewarded? Get in touch with the Fetch for Business team today.