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.