The race toward technology in recent years has enriched retailers’ arsenals with new platforms, new apps, and new data. Now it is time to shift attention from the tools to the way companies and consumers meet, interact, and build value together. In an environment in which both firms and consumers are heavy users of technology, retail managers must move beyond viewing channels as different access routes to customers and instead see them as relational spaces not to be experienced as alternatives or substitutes, but as integrated components of a broader value proposition.
This shift redefines roles, skills, and responsibilities within organizations, putting pressure on business models that were born in a far more linear world.
In a competitive context in which new formats, digital platforms, and hybrid models are eroding the traditional boundaries between industry and distribution, value can be created only by orchestrating a plurality of physical and digital touchpoints into a single coherent proposition. This is the omnichannel logic, a strategic choice that starts from the customer journey and follows it without friction.
Consumers, after all, already live this way. They move seamlessly from smartphone to store, from website to app, often using multiple screens at the same time. If customers do not perceive channels as watertight compartments, companies that continue to do so risk appearing misaligned, if not irrelevant.
In this new equilibrium, loyalty management becomes one of the main testing grounds. Research from the Loyalty Promotion Monitor of the Channel & Retail Lab at SDA Bocconi shows how digitalization and the integration of touchpoints give an increasingly important role to loyalty programs. Building ongoing and personalized relationships takes on an importance even greater than the ability to incentivize repeat purchases. The ability to collect and analyze information on customer behavior allows retailers to better understand needs, preferences, and expectations, even to anticipate them. Personalization, which until a few years ago might have been considered a plus, is now the new minimum threshold of relevance. And when it is well designed, it strengthens loyalty and the trust-based relationship between customer and brand.
Artificial intelligence further accelerates this process. It automates activities, identifies patterns invisible to manual analysis, dynamically segments customers, and enables targeted promotions. Chatbots and virtual assistants transform customer service into a continuous and personalized experience. This creates the possibility of moving from descriptive metrics to predictive logics, capable of guiding strategic decisions before behaviors fully emerge.
Naturally, challenges are not lacking. Managing big data requires advanced skills, investments in training, and new professional roles. Protecting personal data is a non-negotiable priority in a context in which consumer trust is fragile and regulation increasingly stringent. And there is a clear risk of polarization: companies that slow down on digitalization risk falling behind more innovative players.
What is at stake is the ability to truly assert customer centrality. Integrating data from physical and digital touchpoints enables finer demand segmentation, the identification of distinct buyer personas, and the design of truly tailored loyalty programs. In this framework, loyalty must include relational, value-based, and emotional dimensions.
Transactions are replaced by interactions, incentives by relationships, the short term by the long term. Companies that manage to make this transition will be better at managing channels and at building stronger, longer-lasting relationships with customers who are increasingly informed and connected.
The future of retail, ultimately, will be decided by the ability to use technology to create coherent, meaningful, and shared experiences in the relational spaces that consumers already inhabit in their everyday lives.
Castaldo, S. (2025). Digital loyalty. Leveraging digital touchpoints, big data, and AI to boost shopper trust. EGEA.
